The Patient with Neurological Disease

As no other examination, the neurological exam varies in both its goals and structure depending whether the patient is co-operative or not. While the focus of the examination of the responsive patient is to identify potential focal neurological deficits, the examination of the unresponsive patient targets to identify the cause of the unresponsiveness and localize the underlying lesion(s) in the brain. The clinical method to determine brain(stem) death is a classic example of a structured physical examination (Tables 15.1, 15.2 and 15.3).