Final answer:
The Glasgow Coma Scale measures eye-opening, verbal, and motor responses to assess consciousness with a max score of 15, indicating full responsiveness, and a min score of 3, signaling deep unconsciousness or coma.
Step-by-step explanation:
The Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) is a clinical tool used to assess and quantify the level of consciousness in a person who has suffered head injury or other types of acute brain damage. The GCS measures three behaviors: eye-opening response, verbal response, and motor response. The maximum score a person can achieve on the Glasgow Coma Scale is 15, indicating full responsiveness, while the minimum score is 3, which indicates deep unconsciousness or coma.
The eye-opening response is scored from 1 to 4, with score levels that assess whether eye-opening is spontaneous, to speech, to pain, or not present. The verbal response is scored from 1 to 5, taking into account orientation, confused conversation, inappropriate words, incomprehensible sounds, or no response at all. The motor response ranges from 1 to 6, looking at obedience to commands, localizing pain, normal flexion, abnormal flexion, extension to pain, and no response.
To achieve the highest GCS score of 15, a patient would exhibit spontaneous eye-opening (4), be oriented and converse normally (5), and follow commands with normal movement (6). Conversely, the lowest score of 3 reflects no eye-opening (1), no verbal response (1), and no motor response (1). Medical professionals use the GCS as a standardized measure to assess the severity of brain injury and to communicate the patient's level of consciousness in an objective and clear manner.