Bryan J. Jennett

Bryan Jennett
Born	1926 Twickenham
Died	26 January 2008
Fields	Neurosurgery

Bryan Jennett (1926–2008) was a Scottish neurosurgeon, a faculty member at the University of Glasgow Medical School, and the first full-time chair of neurosurgery in Scotland. He was the co-developer of the assessment tool known as the Glasgow Coma Scale and made advancements in the care of patients with brain injuries. Jennett and another physician coined the term vegetative state.

Jennett was born in Twickenham. His parents were Irish and Scottish. He briefly worked on his family's farm in Scotland during the Second World War before going into medicine.

Jennett studied at Liverpool Medical School. He finished top of his year and was President of the national British Medical Students Association. Jennett's first mentor in medicine, Henry Cohen, 1st Baron Cohen of Birkenhead, encouraged him toward a career in neurosurgery. He went on to take posts at Oxford, Cardiff and Manchester as well as a spell in the Royal Army Medical Corps.

His academic interests were not congruent with the times and he was turned down for promotion in Oxford, Manchester and Dundee. He believed that the NHS at the time placed too much emphasis on patronage and were not supportive of academic interests. He considered a permanent move to America after a one-year Rockefeller Fellowship at UCLA, but was headhunted in 1963 for a new combined NHS/University position in Glasgow. Over the next ten years he became a Professor and moved to a purpose built unit at the Southern General Hospital.

Prior to moving to Glasgow, Jennett published work on epilepsy following head injuries. He published Introduction to Neurosurgery in 1964.

Jennett set up a prospective computerised data bank to collect the features and outcome of head injuries. Data was compiled from Glasgow, the United States, and the Netherlands over a long period and led to a series of papers in the 1970s, the introduction of the near universally adopted Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) with Graham Teasdale, and the Glasgow Outcome Scale with Bond. In 1972 working with Dr Plum of America, Jennett published The Persistent Vegetative State – defining a condition and coining a phrase which remains in widespread use today. His work with the Glasgow-based Neuropathologists Adams and Graham significantly reduced mortality and disability. Many international collaborative studies followed, comparing outcomes after different severity of injury and with alternative therapeutic regimes.

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