An injury to the brain can understandably be frustrating, negatively impacting a patient’s quality of life in Kentucky. However, scientists have developed a brand-new assessment tool based on the well-known Glasgow Coma Scale, or GCS, in an effort to offer more information about the severity of a brain injury. The tool may also provide more information about the prognosis of patients with traumatic brain injuries.
The GCS made its debut in 1974 to assess impaired consciousness and coma. The scale essentially describes variations in a patient’s verbal, eye and motor responses. The scale has been used across the globe by emergency medical technicians, physicians and nurses.
The new assessment tool extends the data collected with the GCS on how severe a traumatic brain injury is. This tool places focus on pupil reactivity — a clinical feature that provides a great deal of information about the prognosis of a patient with a head injury. After all, patients with severe head injuries commonly have nonreactive pupils. The new tool has particularly received praise for being user friendly and simple to use.
In some cases, a traumatic brain injury in Kentucky happens as a result of a car accident or a serious fall caused by a careless person — such as a motorist who was texting while driving or a property owner who failed to maintain his or her property. In these situations, the patient has the right to file a personal injury claim, seeking the reimbursement of monetary damages. A successfully fought claim might yield a monetary award that may help the patient to address his or her medical bills and other accident-related losses.
Source: sciencedaily.com, “Brain Trauma: New Glasgow Coma Scale-pupils score and multifactor probability outcome charts“, April 10, 2018