Can You Text Me? Now You Know Your Score on the Coma Scale

By KIRK FERNANDES
ABC News Medical Unit

Text messaging has certainly picked up a bad reputation on the health beat in recent months. One might even call it technologica non grata.

The rap sheet ranges from painful thumb disabilities and allergic reactions caused by the nickel in some phones to the psychological trauma one experiences when an intimate text (with an even more intimate photo attached) is posted and tagged on Facebook by a less-than-discretionary recipient.

But now there might be something to add in the texting "pro" column, at least from the perspective of the medical community. It turns out one’s ability to text is a sign one has adequately recovered from a fainting episode — so says a group of U.K. medical workers who treat injured concertgoers in triage tents.

The three — two anaesthetists and a clinical neuropsychologist — report in the British Medical Journal that they’ve used the ability to text message as a marker for consciousness in patients, usually teenagers.

"We decided to use this texting sign as an indication that patients had recovered from their faint or panic attack and were orientated and coordinated enough to be discharged back to the festival," the report states.

The triage workers went on to equate the ability to text with the highest score on the Glasgow coma scale — a measure  used to figure out a patient’s state of consciousness by examining abilities in three areas: eye opening, verbal performance and motor responsiveness.

Someone who shows no response in all three areas gets a  score of 3 — and is deemed unconscious, in a coma or both, if not dead.

People who open their eyes spontaneously, speak  without confusion and obey  commands for movement get a score of 15, and are apparently ready to return to the mosh pit.

"The ability to text, whether or not it actually makes sense, requires … an adequately functioning ‘executive system’ in the frontal lobes, and a high degree of manual dexterity and psychomotor coordination," the report states.

Dr. Sheldon Jacobson, chairman of the department of emergency medicine at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York is not convinced.

"The fact that a study such as this has been published in a reputable journal is troubling," said Jacobson. "Just because a teenager is pushing keys on his or her phone does not clear the patient to go back to regular activities."

Both Jacobson and Dr. Frederick Blum, an associate professor of pediatrics and emergency medicine at the West Virginia University School of Medicine, said that while fainting in young, healthy patients is usually not a major cause for concern, a small number of youths may have fainted because of an underlying heart condition.

Still, Blum said: "I do believe that this sort of marker has potential in this population, which is often otherwise difficult to evaluate. In my experience, teens that swoon, sometimes do so for nonmedical reasons. And that is often just as difficult for doctors as it is for parents."

The triage workers do acknowledge in the report that the "texting sign" needs further investigation to determine whether it is a "valid criterion" for recovery.