Brain scans reveal consciousness level

摘要

No matter how good your bedside manner, diagnosing levels of consciousness in people with severe brain injury is tough. Brain scans might be able to help. Most hospitals use bedside tests - such as shining light into the eye - to gauge how conscious someone is. But this results in wrong diagnosis about 40 per cent of the time. Brain scans are seldom used because there was no evidence they work any better.