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Celebrating 50 Years of ‘Glasgow’s Gift to the World’
Written by Kat Hannah
The Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) – a tool that has become an integral part of the care of brain injured patients around the world – marked its 50th year with a conference held at the College this summer.
Former College President Professor Sir Graham Teasdale and his co-author, the late Professor Bryan Jennett, first presented the Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) in a landmark paper published in The Lancet in 1974. It has revolutionised patient care by providing a consistent and reliable method of measuring – and describing – impaired consciousness over time, without the use of specialised equipment.
The GCS has been translated into 45 languages and features in 100 global clinical guidelines. The conference, organised by Mr Chris Barrett, explored its impact.
Sir Graham said: “I am delighted to be celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Glasgow Coma Scale, a scale Bryan Jennett and I devised so anyone, anywhere, could use it to communicate effectively and consistently about patients in clinical settings and in research studies and articles.
“A key factor of the Glasgow Coma Scale’s success is the involvement of nursing staff, who provided input and made it clear it was an important part of their work – and that’s one of the key things that has sustained it these past fifty years.
“It has been pleasing to see the Glasgow Coma Scale adopted throughout the world, because we designed it to be something that would do just that, and it was reassuring that we got it pretty well right. Personally, its success comes with satisfaction and pleasure that it has worked, and that people bought into our ideas and helped develop them.”
Mike McKirdy, College President, said: “In addition to the academic rigour and genius of the authors’ early work, it was their determination to collaborate and cooperate with their peers in Europe and North America which led to the widespread and rapid adoption of the scale.
“The GCS has been a gift from Glasgow to the world, revolutionising the care of the unconscious patient, and our College can be rightly proud that Sir Graham Teasdale went on to serve as President from 2003 until 2006.”
Visit the GCS website at www.glasgowcomascale.org
