All About Traumatic Brain Injury – Causes, Diagnosis, Treatment

The term traumatic brain injury (TBI) refers to injuries to the brain that are caused by some form of traumatic impact. Traumatic brain injuries usually are caused by a blow to the head, violent shaking or penetration of the brain tissue. Depending on the cause and severity of the brain injury, brain damage can be mild, moderate or severe.

Initial symptoms of a traumatic brain injury may include:

In more serious cases of traumatic brain injury, complications can be fatal. While the severity of traumatic brain injuries varies, the long-term effects are often devastating and life-altering.

Traumatic brain injury is sudden, non-congenital physical damage to the brain from an external force that temporarily or permanently disrupts normal brain function. Brain characteristics and functions that can be affected include consciousness, speech and language, memory, mobility, personality and others. Because the brain controls all bodily functions, any damage to the brain, regardless of severity, can impair physical and psychological activity.

Types of traumatic brain injuries are divided into two categories: open head injury and closed head injury. Open head injuries are injuries in which the skull has been fractured or the membranes surrounding the brain (dura mater) have been breached. Open head injuries are very serious and often require surgery to extract pieces of the fractured skull and implant synthetic pieces. Closed head injuries, on the other hand, do not break the skull and are typically caused by blows to the head. Both open and closed head injuries can cause mild to severe brain damage.

Damage from traumatic brain injuries is classified as either focal or diffuse. Focal damage is confined to a small area of the brain where the head has been hit by an object or where an object has penetrated the brain. Diffuse damage is damage to several areas of the brain; it can be caused by lack of oxygen, aneurisms, infection, neurological diseases or violent collisions of the brain with the inside of the skull.

Symptoms of traumatic brain injury vary depending on the severity of the injury. Mild traumatic brain injury victims may experience a brief loss of consciousness, temporary memory loss, headache, slurred speech or dilated pupils. Some mild traumatic brain injury victims do not lose consciousness at all. Moderate to severe brain injury victims may lose consciousness for an extended period of time (more than 30 minutes) and have long-term memory loss, seizures or convulsions, nausea or vomiting, limb paralysis, vision loss, hearing loss or bowel control loss. When a person sustains a blow to the head it is imperative that he or she receive immediate medical attention, regardless of the immediate symptoms of the injury.

Traumatic brain injuries are typically caused by blows to the head, collision between the brain and the inside of the skull, or both. Some of the most common causes of traumatic brain injury include falls, transportation accidents and assaults. Transportation accidents account for more than half of all traumatic brain injuries, including concussions, and are the leading cause of traumatic brain injury in people under 75 years old. Falls are the leading cause of traumatic brain injury in people over 75 years old. In addition, many traumatic brain injuries (about 20 percent) result from violent acts such as firearm assaults or child abuse. Sports-related accidents account for about 3 percent of all traumatic brain injury cases.

Complications of traumatic brain injury vary depending on the cause and the extent of brain damage. Some of the most common traumatic brain injury complications include personality changes, insomnia, headache, cognitive disabilities and sensory changes. More severe traumatic brain injury complications include pooling of blood in the head (hematoma), epilepsy, amnesia, paralysis, coma and death. Additionally, studies have suggested a link between traumatic brain injury and the development of both Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease.

Diagnosing traumatic brain injury often requires doctors to perform a physical examination of the head and a variety of verbal tests. Using either the Glasgow Coma Scale or the Rancho Los Amigos Coma Scale, they ask traumatic brain injury patients several questions to assess their level of consciousness and their ability to speak, move and open their eyes.

Read more:
All About Traumatic Brain Injury - Causes, Diagnosis, Treatment