The Hunt and Hess scale is one of the grading systems used to classify the severity of a subarachnoid hemorrhage

Subarachnoid hemorrhage

A subarachnoid hemorrhage , or subarachnoid haemorrhage in British English, is bleeding into the subarachnoid space—the area between the arachnoid membrane and the pia mater surrounding the brain...

 based on the patient's clinical condition. It is used as a predictor of patient's prognosis/outcome, with a higher grade correlating to lower survival rate. Introduced in 1968, the Hunt and Hess scale is now used less frequently, and has largely been replaced by the World Federation of Neurosurgical Societies classification.

Description grade

1. Asymptomatic
   Asymptomatic
   In medicine, a disease is considered asymptomatic if a patient is a carrier for a disease or infection but experiences no symptoms. A condition might be asymptomatic if it fails to show the noticeable symptoms with which it is usually associated. Asymptomatic infections are also called subclinical...
   
   , mild headache
   Headache
   A headache or cephalalgia is pain anywhere in the region of the head or neck. It can be a symptom of a number of different conditions of the head and neck. The brain tissue itself is not sensitive to pain because it lacks pain receptors. Rather, the pain is caused by disturbance of the...
   
   , slight nuchal rigidity
2. Moderate to severe headache, nuchal rigidity, no neurologic
   Neurology
   Neurology is a medical specialty dealing with disorders of the nervous system. Specifically, it deals with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of disease involving the central, peripheral, and autonomic nervous systems, including their coverings, blood vessels, and all effector tissue,...
   
    deficit other than cranial nerve palsy
   Palsy
   In medicine, palsy is the paralysis of a body part, often accompanied by loss of sensation and by uncontrolled body movements, such as shaking. Medical conditions involving palsy include cerebral palsy , brachial palsy , and Bell's palsy ....
   
   
3. Drowsiness / confusion, mild focal neurologic deficit
4. Stupor
   Stupor
   Stupor is the lack of critical cognitive function and level of consciousness wherein a sufferer is almost entirely unresponsive and only responds to base stimuli such as pain. This is often mistaken for delirium and treated with Haldol and or other anti-psychotic drugs...
   
   , moderate-severe hemiparesis
   Hemiparesis
   Hemiparesis is weakness on one side of the body. It is less severe than hemiplegia - the total paralysis of the arm, leg, and trunk on one side of the body. Thus, the patient can move the impaired side of his body, but with reduced muscular strength....
   
   
5. Coma
   Coma
   In medicine, a coma is a state of unconsciousness, lasting more than 6 hours in which a person cannot be awakened, fails to respond normally to painful stimuli, light or sound, lacks a normal sleep-wake cycle and does not initiate voluntary actions. A person in a state of coma is described as...
   
   , decerebrate posturing

It gives an index of the mortality associated with the various grades. The mortality is minimum with grade one and maximum with grade five.

See also

• Subarachnoid haemorrhage
• World Federation of Neurosurgical Societies grading system