title: Emergency Neurological Life Support: Approach to the Patient with Coma.
abstract: Coma is an acute failure of neuronal systems governing arousal and awareness and represents a medical emergency. When encountering a comatose patient, the clinician must have an organized approach to detect easily remediable causes, prevent ongoing neurologic injury, and determine a hierarchical plan for diagnostic tests, treatments, and neuromonitoring. Coma was chosen as an Emergency Neurological Life Support protocol because timely medical and surgical interventions can be life-saving, and the initial work-up of such patients is critical to establishing a correct diagnosis.
authors.affiliation: Departments of Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine; Neurology; Neurosurgery; and Radiology, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA. rstevens@jhmi.edu.
authors.forename: Robert D
authors.initials: RD
authors.lastname: Stevens
authors.affiliation: Departments of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Emergency Medicine, University of North Carolina School of Medicine, Chapel Hill, NC, USA.
authors.forename: Rhonda S
authors.initials: RS
authors.lastname: Cadena
authors.affiliation: Department of Pediatrics, Division of Critical Care Medicine, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO, USA.
authors.forename: Jose
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Pineda
mesh_terms: D003128:Coma / Q000628:therapy*; D004638:Emergency Treatment / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D008020:Life Support Care / Q000379:methods*; D009462:Neurology / Q000379:methods*
keywords: Coma; Consciousness; Critical care; Neurocritical care