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Unconsciousness
Loss of awareness of self and environment
Loss of awareness of self and environment
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| name | Unconsciousness |
| image | Recovery Position.JPG |
| caption | An unconscious male human lying in a recovery position |
| field | Psychiatry |
| Neurology | |
| Cardiology | |
| Pulmonology | |
| Emergency medicine |
Neurology Cardiology Pulmonology Emergency medicine
Unconsciousness is a state in which a living individual exhibits a complete, or near-complete, inability to maintain an awareness of self and environment or to respond to any human or environmental stimulus. Unconsciousness may occur as the result of traumatic brain injury, brain hypoxia (inadequate oxygen, possibly due to a brain infarction or cardiac arrest), severe intoxication with drugs that depress the activity of the central nervous system (e.g., alcohol and other hypnotic or sedative drugs), severe fatigue, pain, anaesthesia, and other causes.
Loss of consciousness should not be confused with the notion of the psychoanalytic unconscious, cognitive processes that take place outside awareness (e.g., implicit cognition), and with altered states of consciousness such as sleep, delirium, hypnosis, and other altered states in which the person responds to stimuli, including trance and psychedelic experiences.
Causes
This is not a complete list.
Cardiovascular system
- Arrhythmia (irregular heart beat)
- Bleeding
- Cardiac arrest
- Cardiomegaly
- Heart failure (HF) (congestive heart failure (CHF))
- Myocardial infarction (MI) (heart attack)
- Myocarditis
- Pericarditis
- Shock
Nervous system
- Brain abscess
- Brain tumor
- Encephalitis
- Increased intracranial pressure
- Intracerebral hemorrhage (hemorrhagic stroke)
- Ischemic stroke
- Meningitis
- Seizure
- Subarachnoid hemorrhage
- Traumatic brain injury (TBI) (intracranial injury)
Respiratory system
- Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS)
- Choking
- Drowning
- Lung cancer (lung carcinoma)
- Pneumonia
- Pulmonary embolism (PE)
- Respiratory arrest
- Respiratory failure
Other
- Drugs
- Electrocution
- Kidney failure
- Liver failure
- Poison or venom
- Sepsis
Law and medicine
In many countries, it is presumed that someone who is less than fully conscious cannot give consent to anything. This can be relevant in cases of sexual assault, euthanasia, or patients giving informed consent with regard to starting or stopping a medical treatment.
References
References
This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.
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