How serious is a head injury? What is a head injury

After a head injury, there is a shallow breathing and pulse, rhythm disorders, and a drop in blood pressure, which generally gradually returns to normal after a few minutes or more than ten minutes. If the vital signs are disturbed for a prolonged period of time and there is no sign of recovery, the brainstem damage is severe；If vital signs have returned to normal after injury, then a gradual increase in blood pressure and slowing of breathing and pulse often suggests a secondary intracranial hematoma.

If the pupil on one side is dilated immediately after the injury, the light response disappears, and the patient is conscious, which is usually a direct primary injury to the oculomotor nerve; If the size of the pupils is unequal and variable bilaterally, it indicates damage to the midbrain; If the bilateral pupils are extremely constricted and the light response is absent, pontine injury is usually present.

If one side of the pupil is first narrowed and then dilated, the light response is poor, and the patient's consciousness is aggravated, which is a typical tentorial herniation; If the bilateral pupils are dilated and fixed, the photoresponse is absent, and most of them are endangered.

Brain injuries vary in severity and are not done in exactly the same way. If it is a mild brain injury, brain **, after the injury consciousness is clear, you can temporarily do not use special drugs**, closely observe the changes in vital signs and limb activities, try to stay in bed, maintain a stable mood, avoid excitement, excessive fear, if headache, you can use painkillers. Patients with moderate brain injury should keep the airway open, give oxygen inhalation, if there is obvious dyspnea, you can do tracheotomy, if the intracranial pressure is increased and cerebral edema, you should use dehydrating drugs such as mannitol, drugs that nourish nerves such as B vitamins, brain protein hydrolysates and other drugs that nourish brain cells**, and can also be combined with hyperbaric oxygen chambers**.

Particularly severe brain injury requiring surgery**.

It is very serious, mild with speech disorders, inflexible limbs, and severe cases can become vegetative and even die

Speech disorders, heavy will be unable to take care of themselves.

Head injury is a common traumatic injury that can occur alone or in combination with other injuries. It is classified into scalp injury, skull injury and brain injury according to the anatomical location of the brain, and the three can coexist. Scalp injuries include scalp hematoma, scalp laceration, scalp avulsion.

Skull fractures include linear fractures of the skull, basilar skull fractures, and depressed fractures. Brain injuries include brain **, diffuse axonal injury, cerebral contusion, and brainstem injury. According to the time and type of injury, it can be divided into primary head injury and secondary head injury.

According to whether the contents of the cranial cavity communicate with the outside world, they are divided into closed head injury and open head injury. According to the severity of the injury, it can be divided into four types: light, moderate, severe and extraordinary.

1. Epilepsy, a brain nervous system disease, is a relatively common sequelae for patients with craniocerebral injury. The occurrence of craniocerebral injury is likely to damage the patient's nervous system, resulting in abnormal electrical discharge of neurons in the patient's brain due to neurological dysfunction, which promotes the formation of epilepsy. 2. Aphasia is also one of the common sequelae of head injury, the occurrence of aphasia is mainly caused by the damage of the patient's cerebral cortex language center, which is caused by the damage of the head injury, resulting in the loss of the patient's language expression ability and language comprehension ability, but there may be some differences in the form of language impairment manifested by different patients.

3. Brain injury will also cause the sequelae of amnesia syndrome, the main feature of which is the fiction based on forgetting, and patients are often prone to emotional difficulties in control. 43. Cognitive loss is also a sequelae caused by head injury. Although the sequelae are relatively common, the loss of cognitive function can greatly affect the normal life of the patient, resulting in a serious decline in the ability to live a normal social life.

The first is traumatic brain injury aphasia, in which the language center of the cerebral cortex is damaged due to trauma, and the patient's ability to express and understand language is affected, such as being unable to understand some written expressions smoothly or unable to fully recall or describe the names of objects.

The second is cognitive dysfunction caused by traumatic brain injury, which is relatively rare, and patients can see and feel the presence of objects, but they are unable to grasp the correct use and function.

The third sequelae of severe head injury is post-traumatic brain epilepsy, when a person's head suffers post-traumatic epilepsy, many cases are due to abnormal discharge of neurons in the patient's brain, resulting in severe non-brain penetrating injury and some patients with cerebral penetrating injury, this kind of epilepsy may occur many years after traumatic brain injury.

The fourth sequelae of severe head injury is that if the area of the patient's cranial injury mainly controls the visual center, it may lead to varying degrees of impairment in vision and visual field function.

The fifth sequelae of severe head injury, if the area of the patient's cranial injury controls the auditory center, then even after **, there may often be auditory hallucinations or hearing loss and loss. Patients may also have impaired memory and intelligence, although symptoms are relatively insidious and require thorough observation.

1 In the clinic, although the patient with severe head injury has undergone active surgery, plus some assistance, physiotherapy, traditional Chinese medicine, etc., the prognosis is still very poor, according to clinical experience, the recovery of severe head injury within one month after surgery is the most rapid period of recovery, 1-3 months after the patient's recovery is relatively slow, 3-6 months after the patient's recovery is already very slow, it can be said that the basic stereotype, of course, there are exceptions to everything, some patients after many years, There is still slow progress, which is what is often seen, of vegetative people waking up after more than a decade.

2. The most common symptoms after craniocerebral injury are headache and dizziness, of course, the location of the injury is different, and the sequelae of the plexus index may also be different. If the site of the injury is in some specific functional areas, there may be some different functional impairments, for example, if the injury is in the motor area, there will be some sensorimotor disorders. The area of damage is in the visual center, and there is a risk of visual and visual field impairment.

The area of damage is in the auditory center, so the patient often has hearing loss or hearing loss. The place of damage is in the brainstem, then the patient may experience prolonged coma and even death. If the site of the injury is located in the brain tissue of the frontotemporal, then the patient often has problems with mental, psychological, behavioral, and intellectual problems.

3. The recovery of head injury is a long-term and arduous process, after discharge, it is necessary to pay attention to rest, regular life, light diet, avoid staying up late, overwork, avoid strenuous activities, especially head activities, and for those patients with skull defects, special attention should be paid to protecting the skull defect area, to avoid re-injury of the defect area in the process of activity, in addition to quitting smoking and drinking, maintaining a good attitude, establishing confidence in defeating the disease, and appropriate exercise is also very necessary. Especially for those patients who are not completely active before discharge, more attention should be paid to continuing to exercise after discharge.

4. In addition to daily fresh vegetables and fruits, patients with head injury can also eat some protein-rich foods to promote the recovery of cranial cells, such as fish, lean meat, milk, eggs and other high-quality protein foods, in addition, they can also eat some nuts containing unsaturated fatty acids, such as walnuts, hazelnuts, and almonds, which are conducive to the nutrition of cells and promote the recovery of the function of the whole limb.

In clinical practice, the recovery time of brain injury is generally about 2-3 weeks, but it must also be evaluated according to the actual condition of the patient. Because in clinical practice, the concept of brain injury is very broad, some people are relatively mild, such as brain **, brain trauma reaction, etc., this will not have a special impact on the brain parenchyma, if the patient has no other complications, 1-2 weeks can also return to normal, basically does not affect normal life. Some brain injuries are relatively serious, such as diffuse axonal injury, brain herniation, etc., many of which need to be operated on to better protect the most basic life safety of patients and have a better recovery in the future, so the recovery of such patients may take 1-22 months or even longer.

The recovery time of brain injury must be treated according to the specific condition at that time, and the mechanism of each patient's injury is different, so the degree of injury is different, which affects the recovery time.

Generally speaking, the vast majority of patients need two to three weeks, because after the vast majority of patients have suffered brain injury, they need to undergo craniotomy**, after craniotomy, the blood in the skull is removed, and the necrotic brain tissue is removed at the same time, and the pressure is appropriately reduced**, which is relatively beneficial to later healing.

There are two most dangerous periods to go through, one is the first three days, which is the period of intracranial hemorrhage or further progression of brain injury, and the second dangerous period is about 14 days, which is the peak period of intracranial swelling.

The following head injuries are most urgently managed

a.Brain**.

b.The top of the depression fracture, up to a depth.

c.Fracture of the basilar skull and trapped in the ulnar causes bleeding in the external auditory canal.

d.Open head injury, spillage of brain tissue.

e.Intracranial hematoma and brain herniation form.

Brain **** principle:

1.Brain ** patients should be hospitalized for observation for 2-3 days for a short period of time after injury, and regularly observe the changes in consciousness, pupils and vital signs, so as to detect possible intracranial hematomas in time.

2.Proper bed rest to reduce mental and physical effort.

3.Symptomatic support**.

4.Spiritual encouragement, dispel concerns.

Principles of medication:

1.Patients with headache and insomnia can be treated with analgesics and hypnotics, respectively.

2.Early post-injury vomiting is significant and interferes with eating, and intravenous fluid gauge precursors are replaced.

Depressed fractures at the top of the site, up to depth, should be operated on as soon as possible.

Bleeding from the external auditory canal due to basilar skull fracture: do not block or flush to avoid intracranial infection. Optic nerve or facial nerve injury caused by prolonged intracranial pneumops should be removed as soon as possible if the bone fragments are not compressed. Antibiotics are given**.

Open head injury, spillage of brain tissue: Surgery as soon as possible. Prevent infection.

Intracranial hematoma with herniation : Urgent surgical management is warranted.

Brain damage is caused by violence.

The mortality rate of severe trauma to the head is between 4% and 7%, and the mortality rate of severe brain injury is as high as 50% to 60%. Brain injuries can be divided into closed and open injuries.

There are two main categories, the former refers to brain tissue.

Injuries that are out of contact with the outside world are usually closed brain injuries; The latter refers to the injury of brain tissue to communicate with the outside world, and when there is a crack in the scalp and skull, and there is an overflow of cerebrospinal fluid and/or brain tissue, it is an open brain lesion. In addition, when the head is hit by a high-velocity bullet, the bullet or shrapnel can penetrate the scalp and skull and cause brain damage, which is called a firearm injury and is usually an open brain injury.

It can be conditioned by traditional Chinese medicine, and the effect is still good.