Simple question: Ignoring the ethical implications, what would happen to a comatose person if you tried to wake him or her through extreme noxious stimulation? Sorry to sound macabre, but if you actually set them on fire, or other painful stimulation, would they not wake up? I’d think the human body would snap out of anything, even a coma, if it was a matter of life and death? I mean, I can see a situation with a person in a vegetative state for years being woken up by setting their legs on fire, and then treating them for burns. I find this image terrible and amusing. I can’t imagine this comatose person just lying there and letting themselves be burned to death. Wouldn’t the body automatically make itself aware to defend against a threat to life?
Do not worry, I am not studying to be a doctor. But I’m curious to know if noxious stimulation has been attempted in trying to wake comatose people? I’m assuming here the damage done by the noxious stimuli can be repaired, and that the overall benefit of being restored to consciousness will outweigh the painful method of restoration to a conscious state.
No, it’s not a good idea. Look, I know my assumptions are wrong. Just asking you guys to educate me. I don’t know the first thing about this stuff, and I am sure if it worked it would be done all the time. Am I right to assume that the first ancient caveman who found his fellow caveman in a coma would have tried to use pain to snap them out of it? Why doesn’t it work, and how would the body react?
There are different variations on comas, but the basic principle is that the brain has suffered enough damage that the person cannot wake up. Furthermore, the brain might be damaged enough that it cannot even sense the pain. What you suggest is like saying “If my car has no spark plugs, maybe I just need to turn the key in the ignition extra hard.”
I don’t know the extent to which it’s been tried because it’s just the wrong mechanism altogether, but some coma patients have other injuries that would be causing pain if they were capable of feeling it.
If a person is “in a coma”, then they may respond in some way to pain, but they will not regain full consciousness. If they regain full consciousness in the presence of pain, then they’re not in a coma.
Part of how we determine the level of consciousness in a person is to carefully apply painful stimulation and see how they react. It’s part of an evaluation tool called the “Glasgow Coma Scale”. Basically, you get points for different responses in eye, verbal and motor response to different kinds of stimulus.
(Note that you literally cannot score lower than a 3. A dead body gets a 3.)
We don’t set them on fire. We press on the nail bed of a finger or rub their sternum (breastbone) firmly. These are painful enough to wake a sleeping person and to make a faking person respond in some way.
I remember reading in one of my college textbooks a case study of a man who was faking a coma, but he woke right up when the nurse announced she was about to put in a catheter.
Hands up if you’re also squeezing your fingertips and rubbing your sternum to see how bad it hurts…
It was my first thought when I read the OP, I don’t remember if I saw it on House or ER or something else, but they wanted to see if someone was faking so the doctor put on a rubber glove and rubbed (I think his knuckle) back and forth on the patients sternum, just a few times, but hard enough to create some friction. Almost like using a pencil eraser.
It always reminds me of a self defense thing I was taught, that when someone (if they’re wearing shorts) grabs you from behind, you can run the heel of your shoe down their shin. The pain should hopefully catch them off guard long enough that you can get away.
Are people in a coma capable of having dreams? Or nightmares?
I’ve read horror stories about people who were severely injured (like, severely burned), and placed into a state of artificial “medically-induced coma”, sometimes for extended periods of time. When they are finally aroused from the coma, they sometimes report that they had horrific hellish non-stop nightmare-like experiences the whole time.
ETA: Just spent a few minutes “researching” medically-induced comas. TL;DR: They are very different from natural comas, so any comparisons probably don’t mean much.
Had this experience with a family member. They never “woke up” after a major surgery. To demonstrate that they were mostly gone, they laid a pen across the base of the thumbnail and pressed real hard. There was no change to any of the monitors.
So, maybe we could take people in a coma and rent them out as stunt doubles for movies.
Right?! The weird thing is, I can’t press my own fingernail hard enough to really hurt. But boy does it make people jump! I think it’s like trying to tickle yourself.
So, you know about anesthetic, right? Drugs we give to people so that they’ll sleep through things like having their torso sliced open, their rib cage cracked, and their major internal organs re-arranged?
Comas are kind of like that, except (usually) without the drugs.
That’s a good point. I would hope if I was asleep and someone re-arranged my organs it would wake me up.
On the note of anesthetics, when my wife had surgery they gave her the IV and started the drugs. As they wheeled her into the room the doctors and nurses and whoever said “Oh! You’re still awake?”
