This test could predict if coma patients will wake up

Determining whether patients will wake from comas may no longer be a guessing game.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine realized that the most reliable indications of coma outcome only suggest when patients won't wake up. So they decided to study the reverse.

Previously, doctors knew that when brains shift out of midline position, the patient is likely to have a poor medical outcome. The researchers tested whether patients whose brains returned to midline would have a better outcome, using data from new coma patients.

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The scientists were able to determine a measurement, six millimeters, when the association between "deviation from normal brain symmetry and emerging from coma" indicated an improved outcome for the patients, Discovery News reports. In patients who had shifts that were less than six millimeters in two areas of the brain, they had stronger chances of waking. The researchers believe their findings could help create guidelines for surgical techniques to reposition the brain.

"It's never 100 percent — every case is different," Robert Kowalski, lead author of the study, published in the Annals of Neurology, told Discovery News. "But we think that the six millimeters is a good guideline to keep in mind."