The Glasgow Coma Scale is a scoring system used to evaluate someone’s level of consciousness. It is scored out of 15 with 15 being totally awake and alert and 3 being totally not.
The important thing to remember is that the lowest score possible is 3.
Absolutely anything can score a 3, however if you are a living, breathing human being, hopefully you are scoring well up into the 10s.
Generally the GSC is applied in trauma situations and can be used as part of the decision making process of such thing things like should this patient be intubated?
- ≥13 correlates with mild brain injury (or being ok)
- 9-12 correlates with moderate injury
- ≤8 represents severe brain injury – you should probably consider intubating them as they most likely cannot protect their airway
Thanks to Mike for the guest doodle!
Hi there,
I am a final year medical student and have stumbled across your site today looking for a diagram to represent the GCS. I have found yours and I think it’s fab! However when I have copied it over to word to incorporate it in my notes it is a little blurry. I was wondering if there is a higher quality image available?
Kind regards
Gemma
the GCS doodle is awesome :):)
This is awesome!! thank you for sharing this! hehehe I am a visual person myself!
Will you be making more gcs score cards? what about the 25 card set?
thanks.
jeff
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