Designed for use in serial assessments of patients with coma from either medical or surgical causes to be widely applicable.
The GCS is commonly used in the pre-hospital and acute care setting as well as over a patient’s hospital course to evaluate for mental status assessment in both traumatic and non-traumatic presentations.
In the care of an individual patient, the ratings of the three criteria in the Scale should be assessed, monitored, reported, and communicated separately.
The combined Score is an index of the net severity of impairment and is useful as a summary of a patients condition, in classifying groups of different severity, for triage, and in research. The Score cannot be calculated if one or other of the component criteria is not testable.