Measures and outcomes

摘要

The Lancet Neurology has great pleasure in commemorating 40 years since the development of the Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS). Not only has the scale become the standard for the measurement of consciousness level, its has subsequently expanded to provide applications in risk assessment, trend monitoring, classification, and prognosis. The GCS was developed to bring clarity to the definition and monitoring of consciousness, and coincided with an uptake in the study of traumatic brain injury (TBI). The natural corollary of the GCS was the development of a companion scale that looked at outcome in patients after TBI; and a year after the publication of the GCS, Jennett and Bond reported the interview-based Glasgow Outcomes Scale (GOS) for just this purpose.