Value of a revised EEG coma scale for prognosis after cerebral anoxia and diffuse head injury

The prognostic validity for survival of a recently devised EEG grading scale was tested in anoxic and post-traumatic coma. This scale divides EEG in coma into five major grades and ten subdivisions with emphasis on the presence of dominant activities, their amplitude, persistence, distribution and reactivity. In this scale, patterns previously not allocated, such as "spindle pattern coma," "alpha pattern coma," and "theta pattern coma" are also included. The prognostic power of the revised scale was tested retrospectively without knowledge of clinical data in a group of patients with cerebral anoxia after cardiac arrest lasting more than seven minutes and in a group of diffuse head injuries. The validity of the scale was found to be higher than those used in previously published studies, reaching 98.4% prognostic accuracy in anoxic encephalopathies and was very high in head injuries.