What Happens To Your Body When Falling A Coma?

Do you often watch TV? And if you're one of the TV show fanatics, you certainly can't miss the segment where a patient is falling into a coma - then family members will cry, try find ways to resuscitate the victim, or more simply, they will stay by the side to tell stories of memories, even play their favorite music for the patient, all in the hope that the patient will wake up quickly again.

 

But things are not so simple, coma is inherently a complex phenomenon caused by various causes and influences of the human body. Despite the advancement of medicine, we still have to be very cautious when resuscitating a comatose patient. So what exactly happens to the body when we fall into a coma?

First you need to understand that coma is different from sleep, although the origin of the word coma comes from the Greek word “Koma”, Koma means deep sleep.

 

Tried and Failed Ways to Wake a Coma Patient.

 

Either way, a coma is not sleep, you should understand that a coma is one of the forms of human unconsciousness and it will not respond to any stimuli outside the body. For example, when you are near a comatose patient, you can enjoy playing guitar music at full volume, but guess who will be woken up by that noise? The patient is in a coma? No, the ones who were woken up were definitely the sleeping hospital beds next to them.

 

Similarly, try to wake the patient up in another way, you can hurt their body by pricking the surrounding skin with sharp objects. But it's no use, they will be completely unaware and will not react at all. In the past, this method has been one of the treatments used by doctors for comatose patients, with the hope that they can quickly wake up.

 

You know, almost every method is used, to continue the journey of awakening, doctors have to undress the patient and then slowly raise the body temperature with fire and then cool down suddenly with ice. They still don't wake up. Even if you beat them to the point of bleeding, they'll just lie there like they don't know anything.

 

Another treatment idea has been proposed, which is to completely empty the stomach, no doubt doctors think that if a patient is in a state of starvation, the body will force them to wake up. But unfortunately the result remains unchanged despite our best efforts.

 

Learn about coma.

 

Now let's learn about the causes of coma. This phenomenon can happen after a serious accident or during treatment, when the doctor injects anesthesia into the patient and then performs certain procedures. At this point, the brain almost stops working, it is allowed to rest and repair its own damage. In addition to the two reasons mentioned above, the body can also go into a coma due to a stroke, a brain tumor, abusing alcohol, drugs, infection or coma due to increased osmotic pressure in diabetes, etc...

 

Most of the time, the coma lasts only a few weeks, but if it goes through this stage, the patient can live a long vegetative life and it is difficult to recover. But sometimes waking up can also be a burden for them because functions will be more or less impaired, including the ability to speak, mental retardation or coordination of body activities.

 

A therapeutic coma or a targeted coma is only used by doctors when the patient is suffering from severe brain damage due to direct head trauma, toxic treatment overdose or the effects of certain diseases. The purpose of anesthesia is to protect and control pressure inside the brain. It is explained as follows, when traumatized, the patient's brain will swell abnormally, which increases intracranial pressure and kills the related brain parts, making them unable to receive oxygen from the blood vessels brain. Active coma will reduce electrical activity and slow down the brain's metabolism, helping the brain to reduce inflammation and edema.

 

Coma has many types and there is no relation between them:

 

Vegetative life means that a person's body can perform natural movements such as muttering or yawning, but has no response to external stimuli. These movements are all involuntary and easy to cause misunderstandings for the patient's relatives because they mistakenly believe that the patient is awake. But really the brain has stopped working and is only functioning at its lowest level.

Brain death coma is understood as the brain's advanced functions have been completely destroyed and the brain can only perform basic activities such as breathing and swallowing. A person who is brain dead is irreversible, and it is the result of a serious accident or serious illness.

 

The next form is "Stupor", which is not actually a form of coma. People who fall into this state will be completely unconscious but are responsive to stimuli. They are often deeply comatose and do not recover on their own. To sink so deeply into the unconscious that automatic functions such as yawning and swallowing cannot function can be very dangerous.

 

What does the body do when falling into a coma?

 

While in a coma, your brain doesn't seem to perceive nor process information. It can simply be understood that the brain has been "shut down" or is being "restarted". Except in severe cases, their lungs still take over the breathing function and the heart continues to pump blood, because at this time the upper cerebrum is damaged and the lower brain stem is still functioning normally. So if you try to block the airway of a comatose patient, they may still cough and choke to try to restore ventilation.

 

For comatose patients who require an intravenous line to deliver drugs and nutrients via the bloodstream (although some patients still retain the swallowing reflex), moreover they are intubated. to maintain airway.

 

The most common problem for coma patients is muscle atrophy, which comes from the fact that they haven't used their muscles for a long time. The reason why patients with atrophy coma is because they have poor nutrition and the brain parenchyma is in a period of damage, so the muscles will stop contracting because they no longer receive signals from the nerves again.

 

Skin ulcers are also a primary concern for comatose patients. Skin ulcers often occur in areas of skin that are exposed to pressure from lying in bed, sitting in a wheelchair, or being in a cast for a long time due to a broken bone. So we can call it a pressure ulcer. There are 4 stages of skin ulcers:

 

Stage 1: The ulcer will begin to progress when the blood supply to the skin is cut off for two to three hours, and as the skin dies, the ulcer will become painful, the skin will redden, and eventually turn purple.

 

Stage 2: If not detected, the skin will be separated from the meat and there is a risk of infection.

 

Stage 3: The sores will deepen and if left untreated, they will spread to muscles or even bones and are very slow to heal.

 

Stage 4: And if treated, it can take years to heal or even surgery to remove dead skin.

 

The most common places for sores to develop are the buttocks, heels, shoulder blades, back, back of the head, or the sides of the knees.

 

Coma is a complex phenomenon and is still being studied. In 2013, while treating a comatose epileptic man, his doctor accidentally discovered on his CT scan bright ridges on the hippocampus and bilateral ventricular floor. These brain regions are responsible for controlling emotions, memory and controlling the autonomic nervous system. Those ridges appear to show that the patient has experienced a part of the memory during the coma, but it is not significant.

 

The doctors tested their findings by injecting cats with anesthetics and then analyzing their brains. Although they didn't believe there was activity going on, inside the brain was actually trying to work, repair or rebuild itself despite being in a coma.

 

According to medical studies, although comatose patients can wake up within a few weeks and then they will regain the same mental or behavioral capacity as before, but only to a certain extent. Therefore, all researches and new techniques are being explored to improve the life of patients after coma.

 

In 2017, a 35-year-old man was in a vegetative state for about 15 years, after which he was taken for treatment, at which point doctors discovered he was in a "dark state of consciousness" when stimulating the vagus nerve. It is one of the largest nerves in the body and directly controls the functioning of the heart, lungs, upper digestive tract, and other organs. Although the patient was not fully awake, doctors were able to make him open his eyes and raise his eyebrows, but unfortunately he was unable to cry when sad or perform more advanced functions.

 

Although this is a big step forward for medicine, if external stimulation cannot, we can stimulate internal, but because this method is still new, more research is needed. Coma is very complex and cannot be treated universally because effectiveness depends on individual response.