We want to ask the patients to perform certain tasks as part of our assessment, though we wouldn’t expect the patient to follow our commands if they are truly in a coma. Visual tasks are important because they can help us identify if a person has locked-in syndrome rather than coma.
I think reviewing the Coma Recovery Scale will help you because it details the follow-up assessments if someone cannot follow commands (i.e., manually open eyes and present visual threat to assess visual startle as the visual function exam).