Impaired Consciousness and Clinical Monitoring of Patients after Cerebral Injuries

Overview

The author discusses problem of impaired consciousness, their monitoring and in a widercontext also monitoring of patients after cerebral injuries. He emphasizes the importance of theclinical picture in these patients and the importance of ranges of impaired consciousness.Consciousness is simply defined as any response of the organism better than a reflex responseto an external stimulus. All better responses than reflex ones are described as impairedconsciousness, not unconsciousness. Terms such as coma, sopor, stupor are refuted as obsolete.The author emphasizes the importance of monitoring of patients - the dynamics of development,not merely static examination. The author draws attention to pitfalls of contemporary thera-peutic algorithms, which at present dominate in the treatment of severe craniocerebral injuries.From this ensues that most important is information from the place of the accident which canbe provided not only by health workers but also laymen.

Key words:
craniocerebral injuries - impaired consciousness - monitoring of the nervous system.