Falling out of bed or ladder, going downstairs, in the bathroom, and other falls are the most common cause of traumatic brain injury in general, particularly in older adults and young children.
Traumatic brain injury
(TBI) occurs when a sudden external physical attack damages the brain. It is one of the most common causes of disability and death in adults. TBI is a broad term that describes a wide range of injuries that occur in the brain.Damage can be focal (limited to one area of the brain) or diffuse (occurs in more than one area of the brain). The severity of a brain injury can range from a mild concussion to a serious injury that leads to coma or even death. A stroke or backlash brain injury occurs when there is a significant impact on the brain that causes the brain or skull to crash against the opposite side of the impact site. The result is damage to the site of the impact, as well as to the opposite side of the brain.
While any injury can cause a coup d'état brain injury, these incidents are often especially violent and produce immediate symptoms. Serious car accidents blow to the head, hard falls, and acts of violence are particularly skilled at producing these injuries. A concussion, sometimes called mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), is the most common type of brain injury, accounting for hundreds of thousands of emergency room visits each year. Commonly caused by a sudden blow to the head, a concussion shakes the brain and causes the brain to accelerate in the direction of the force.
In other words, a concussion shakes the brain. Concussions range from mild to very severe. A generation ago, most doctors believed that concussions were little more than inconvenient. We now know that a concussion can cause lifelong damage.
People who suffer from multiple concussions may experience concussion-related syndromes. People who have frequent concussions may develop a condition called chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Especially common among professional football players, this form of brain damage can permanently change mood, behavior, and brain function. A contusion is simply a bruise, a mild form of bleeding under the skin.
Brain contusions are similar to concussions and often occur along with them. If a brain contusion does not stop bleeding on its own, it may need to be surgically removed. The extent of damage associated with a brain contusion depends on the size of the bleeding, how long it lasts, the effects of surgery, and the location of the lesion. A diffuse axonal injury (ICD) is similar to a concussion in that it results from brain movement, but it is much more serious.
With an ICD, the head moves so violently that the brain stem cannot keep up with the rhythm of movement, causing tears in the brain connections. These tears can be microscopic and cause varying degrees of brain damage. They can also be quite large. Tears that are big enough can be fatal.
The severity of symptoms with this type of injury depends largely on the brain areas affected, the severity of the tears, and whether other injuries were also suffered, such as a contusion or concussion. Just as a scab that reopens takes longer to heal and can produce a scar, a second brain injury when you've already suffered a first one can cause more catastrophic damage. Sometimes called recurrent traumatic brain injury, the effect of the second-impact syndrome depends on the location of the injury, the severity of the first injury, and the degree of trauma suffered. Shaken baby syndrome is similar to diffuse axonal injury, but tends to produce more global effects.
It is now considered a form of criminal child abuse in most places, it is often the result of parental frustration with incessant crying. Shaken babies often suffer from broken blood vessels and brain hemorrhages, strokes, and tears in the brain and brain stem. In many cases, shaken babies die. The effects are almost always catastrophic and long-lasting.
A concussion is one of the most common forms of TBI. 1 A concussion can occur when the head or body moves back and forth quickly, such as during a car accident or sports injury, or due to a blow to the head. Concussions are often called “mild TBIs” because they are not usually life-threatening. However, they can still cause serious problems, especially if the person has had a concussion before, 3,4. A concussion is the most common type of mild traumatic brain injury and can have serious consequences.
Not only are they limited to high-profile athletes, but concussions are also prevalent in all age groups and in a variety of settings, such as the work environment, car accidents, sports and recreation, and falls at home among older people. The International Consensus Conference on Concussion in Sports defines concussion as “a complex pathophysiological process affecting the brain, induced by biomechanical forces. Since 2000, international expert panels have clarified the definition and modified the management of concussion; these changes have affected recommendations for return to work, school, and sport for concussion sufferers, 1,2. The most common and least severe type of traumatic brain injury is called a concussion. The word comes from the Latin concutere, which means to shake violently.
Most often, a concussion is caused by a direct blow or a sudden blow to the head. The current goal is to use more sophisticated imaging tools to diagnose mild traumatic brain injury using imaging techniques as advanced as diffusion imaging that is sensitive to damage to white matter in the brain, the wires that connect neurons. However, with more severe injuries, these changes can last longer and lead to damage to brain cells. Although chronic traumatic encephalopathy shares several neuropathological features with Alzheimer's disease, it appears to be a different entity.
Second impact syndrome occurs when a person with a concussion, especially a younger person, returns to play before fully recovering and suffers a second brain injury. Axon tearing occurs in more severe brain injuries, but evidence for this mechanism is lacking in concussions. Most symptoms fade over time in mild TBI, and most symptoms resolve within 3 months. Helmets prevent catastrophic brain injuries, such as brain lacerations and intracranial hematomas; however, the helmets that are currently available do not prevent all concussions because they do not eliminate the rotational acceleration of the brain.
A concussion is more likely to be due to rotational acceleration of the brain (brain shaking), 5 which results in a disordered metabolic cascade or biochemical injuries, such as impaired glucose metabolism or adenine nucleotide disorder. People may also experience non-traumatic brain injuries that result from a problem, such as a stroke, infection, or broken blood vessel, inside the brain or skull. Many people recover from a TBI in a matter of days and the most severe forms can cause permanent brain injury or even death. A person who has a nontraumatic brain injury may have some of the same symptoms as a person who has a traumatic brain injury.
Your healthcare provider should check for any type of head or brain injury, even if you don't think the impact was serious. When there is a direct blow to the head, the contusion of the brain and damage to the internal tissue and blood vessels are due to a mechanism called knock-backlash. . .
