Some coma patients may be conscious. New research could identify them.

Some brain injury patients may appear to be in a coma, but they are not. They are processing at least some of what is happening around them but cannot physically respond.

This break between understanding and responding is called cognitive motor dissociation (CMD), a disorder of consciousness following brain injury.

Jan Claassen, who is a neurocritical care physician and the director of Critical Care Neurology at Columbia University/New York-Presbyterian Hospital, and whose laboratory led the recent study, was determined to make CMD diagnosis simpler by incorporating equipment already available in most hospitals. [read more]

Source: The Washington Post