I find that when I eat lunch I can feel myself instantly get tired as if a wave passes through me. My face gets a feeling of being sweaty and flushed. Coffee and copious amounts of water help counteract this. Also, it doesn't happen every day with every meal. Very small amounts of food don't cause this. It's as if I eat above a small threshold, then it happens. It makes it hard to work. A short...

Coma stimulation is a treatment in which a health care professional or a patient's family member systematically applies stimulation to one or more of the patient's five senses, for the purpose of increasing patient responsiveness. The rationale is that exposure to frequent and various sensory stimulation will facilitate both dendritic growth and improve synaptic connectivity in those with damag...

Since the Glasgow Coma Scale was introduced in 1974,(1) it has become the most common method of describing a patient's level of consciousness. However, despite its almost universal use, there remain a number of misunderstandings, particularly regarding the appropriate situations in which to use the Glasgow Coma Score rather than the Scale, and also in the correct way to elicit and record the mo...

OBJECTIVE To determine the accuracy of self-reported length of coma and posttraumatic amnesia (PTA) in persons with medically verified traumatic brain injury (TBI) and to investigate factors that affect self-report of length of coma and PTA duration. DESIGN Prospective cohort study. SETTING Specialized rehabilitation center with inpatient and outpatient programs. PARTICIPANTS Persons (N=2...

Members of the enolase mechanistically diverse superfamily catalyze a wide variety of chemical reactions that are related by a common mechanistic feature, the abstraction of a proton adjacent to a carboxylate group. Recent investigations into the function and mechanism of the phosphosulfolactate synthase encoded by the ComA gene in Methanococcus jannaschii have suggested that ComA, which cataly...

OBJECTIVE This study was designed to determine the prevalence of rhythmic coma patterns in comatose children and to ascertain the prognostic significance of reactive rhythmic coma patterns. METHODS We retrospectively analyzed and classified electroencephalogram (EEGs) in comatose children between two months and 18 years of age during the period 1996 - 2003 according to modified Young's classi...

OBJECTIVE This review examines the best available evidence on the aetiology of childhood acute non-traumatic coma in resource-poor countries (RPCs), discusses the challenges associated with management, and explores strategies to address them. METHODS Publications in English and French which reported on studies on the aetiology of childhood non-traumatic coma in RPCs are reviewed. Primarily, t...

OBJECTIVES Recent changes in malaria transmission have likely altered the aetiology and outcome of childhood coma in sub-Saharan Africa. The authors conducted this study to examine change in incidence, aetiology, clinical presentation, mortality and risk factors for death in childhood non-traumatic coma over a 6-year period. DESIGN Retrospective analysis of prospectively collected data. SET...

A 13-year-old boy with imipramine overdose developed seizures, respiratory arrest, and coma. Abnormalities of oculovestibular reflexes, electroencephalograms, and brainstem auditory evoked potentials were monitored in relation to measurements of drug levels. An alpha-coma electroencephalographic pattern evolved into one evidencing spindle coma and eventually into a normal pattern. Prolonged bra...