A patient who withdraws from painful stimuli, opens eyes on verbal command, and cannot speak because of intubation has a Glasgow Coma Scale of which of the following?

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Multiple Choice

A patient who withdraws from painful stimuli, opens eyes on verbal command, and cannot speak because of intubation has a Glasgow Coma Scale of which of the following?

The Glasgow Coma Scale sums three components: eye opening, verbal response, and motor response. In this scenario, eye opening with a command is three. The patient withdraws from a painful stimulus, which corresponds to a motor score of four. Verbal ability can’t be assessed because the patient is intubated, so the verbal component is not testable; the convention is to assign the verbal score as one (no verbal response) and append a “T” to indicate the intubation. So you combine three for eye opening, four for motor, and one with a T suffix for verbal, giving a total of eight with a T. This is why the notation eight with a T best represents the patient’s Glasgow Coma Scale in this situation.

The Glasgow Coma Scale sums three components: eye opening, verbal response, and motor response. In this scenario, eye opening with a command is three. The patient withdraws from a painful stimulus, which corresponds to a motor score of four. Verbal ability can’t be assessed because the patient is intubated, so the verbal component is not testable; the convention is to assign the verbal score as one (no verbal response) and append a “T” to indicate the intubation.

So you combine three for eye opening, four for motor, and one with a T suffix for verbal, giving a total of eight with a T. This is why the notation eight with a T best represents the patient’s Glasgow Coma Scale in this situation.

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