A mental status belongs in the category of terms that are widely understood but lack a consensual definition. In modern multidisciplinary ICUs, the combination of the diseases being managed and the drugs employed for that management results in a large percentage of patients who develop at least a temporary impairment of awareness or behavior. This area has been obscured by the psychiatric redef...

BACKGROUND Very severe traumatic brain injury may cause disorders of consciousness in the form of coma, unresponsive wakefulness syndrome (also known as vegetative state) or minimally conscious state. Previous studies of outcome for these patients largely pre-date the 2002 definition of minimally conscious state. OBJECTIVES To establish the numbers of patients with disorder of consciousness a...

Coma represents a true medical emergency. Drug intoxications are a leading cause of coma; however, other metabolic disturbances and traumatic brain injury are also common causes. The general emergency department approach begins with stabilization of airway, breathing, and circulation, followed by a thorough physical examination to generate a limited differential diagnosis that is then refined b...

Chronic disorders of consciousness Chronic disorders of consciousness (CDC) are states of illness that are notorious for provoking substantial ethical quandaries. The fiction literature, cinema and theater abound with stories of individuals who have been lying in coma for months or years until they eventually (and miraculously) wake up to see a world that has significantly changed. Famous examp...

We present the first results of a Spitzer IRAC (Infrared Array Camera) wide-field survey of the Coma cluster. The observations cover two fields; the first is a 0.733 deg region in the core of the cluster (Coma 1), the second a 0.555 deg off-center region located ∼57′ (1.7 Mpc) south-west from the core (Coma 3). The IRAC observations, although short 70-90 s exposures, are very sensitive; we dete...

We present estimates of the GALEX near-ultraviolet (NUV) and far-ultraviolet (FUV) luminosity functions (LFs) of the Coma cluster, over a total area of ∼9 deg (∼25 Mpc), i.e. from the cluster center to the virial radius. Our analysis represents the widest and deepest UV investigation of a nearby cluster of galaxies made to date. The Coma UV LFs show a faint-end slope steeper than the one observ...

S t u d y s e l e c t i o n Studies were selected if they were published in English; assessed the association between SEPs (initial cortical responses from median nerve stimulation—i.e., the N19 or N20 responses) and awakening from coma; and reported coma cause, age group studied, presence or absence of SEP responses, timing of SEPs, and coma outcomes. Study exclusion criteria included single c...

In the June issue, Edlow et al used a cutting edge imaging tool to demonstrate tracts in the autopsied brain of a victim of traumatic coma (1). Histologic study of the same brain showed widespread axonal damage in keeping with the long-standing understanding that closed head injury results in diffuse axonal injury throughout the brain (2). The imaging analysis showed, however, that only 1 set o...