How dangerous is letting an unconscious person remain unconscious?

Question

Okay, so I'm writing a story and this girl got knocked unconscious but her skull's fine and there's no blood or anything (probably has a concussion though) and the characters who find her know this for a fact and decide that it might be safer for her if they left her unconscious for someone else to resuscitate. Is that bad? I mean, are there any dangers associated with leaving her unconscious for maybe the next hour or so? And how would they go about waking her up even if they did decide to?

Answer 1

Without adequate medical training it's about as dangerous as it gets.  Without medical training, there is no way to know whether there's intracranial acute blood, what the underlying aetiology of the LOC was, if the patient is post ictal and may vomit & aspirate, etc.  So in short, it's dangerous as all get out.

Answer 2

You seem to have some peculiar misconceptions.

The definition of a concussion is an alternation in conciousness without structural damage, so by definition the best she might have would be a concussion.

Letting her remain unconcious seems a reasonable thing to do, since only God can do otherwise. People wake up when the brain recovers adequately. Treatment is directed at support and the avoidance of complications, and of course it's nice to know if it really is a concussion rather than, say, a subarachnoid hemorrhage that would require surgery.

The deeply comatose are likely to have increased intracranial pressure, which will cause vomiting. Being unconscious, they can't protect the airway when they do vomit. Generally it's best to intubate them for airway control and protection while you're sorting everything out, and it's best if that's done as quickly as possible.

Answer 3

If the patient is unconscious from a head injury, you CAN'T wake them up. Now if you are talking about unconscious and not breathing, or no heartbeat, leaving them for someone else to find would change everything from Rescue to Recovery. You would have to do something right then.

Answer 4

If it were me- I'd have your people use their cell pone to call 911 and get directions over the phone - if there is no reason to not move her- just stay beside her till she wakes up on her own and build some drama around that.

If the time frame is right... as in the movie "Pirates of the Caribbean" -smelling salts or cutting the corset off is an obvious and traditional fix to a faint lol!

If it's Christian fiction- try praying and let the Lord wake her up!

Answer 5

I am going to take your story and tell everybody I wrote it :)