Injury

---Head injuries are one of the commonest of all serious accidents today. Severe brain damage can kill, or turn the victim into a "vegetable." Minor injury leaves no lasting trace. Between these extremes come grades of mental and physical disability depending on the site and depth of the injury.

---Many injuries produce Speaking and moving parts of the body, may prove difficult, and the person may feel drowsy, even falling into coma. The trouble can be due to blood collecting inside the skill and pressing on the brain. Bleeding above the dura matter - the brain’s tough outer covering - produces a blood clot called an exradural hematoma. Bleeding beneath the dura causes a subdural hematoma. Left untended, either may grow large enough to leave lasting damage in the brain. Often, surgeons operate successfully. For instance, to remove a subdural clot, they simply drill a hole into the skull, out the clot and tie off the leaking artery responsible. Brain injuries fall into three main types: jarring, bruising and tearing - technically called concussion, contusion and laceration.

---Concussion is the commonest and mildest kind of the brain injury. Concussed individuals may briefly go unconscious. Headaches, fatigue and insomnia are usual symptoms. Memory and some other higher functions of the brain may be temporarily affected.

---Contusion - bruising of the brain - can be more serious. The individual may lose consciousness, and this state may last for several days. If higher centres of the brain cease to function properly, subsidiary centres that they usually supervise may be affected, producing inhibited behaviours and altering the victim’s personality.

---Laceration is the tearing of the brain - often by a piece of broken skull - and can diminish its blood supply. Germs entering the broken skull may cause serious brain infections, and scarred brain tissue may cause convulsive seizures starting months after the damage happened. Loss of memory (amnesia) may be severe - affecting not just after the accident, but event before and after. The outcome of a head injury depends on several factors. The old, the deeply unconscious and those unable to remember anything since the event are least likely to recover well. Some people regain all their mental faculties yet not the full use of their limbs. Children prove to be the most resilient; badly brain-damaged children go on improving for up to five years after the disaster.

---Luckily, head injuries leave few people with lasting physical and mental disabilities.

Skull fracture

A large stone hitting the head causes less damage than a small one.

A large stone fractures the skull, but because a large area of the bone absorbs the impact, the dura mater is not pierced.

A small stone causes a compound fracture and fragments of bone driven into the brain.

A small blow of the head that causes blood to leak from an artery in the skull puts dangerous pressure on the brain. An epidural hematoma is caused by bleeding into the space above the dura mater. A subdural hematoma is caused by blood in the space below the dura mater.

Area of damage

---The nerves from the right and left sides of the body cross over before they reach the motor cortex of the brain. Thus an injury to the left side causes paralysis on the right side of the body. Injuries to the top of the brain affect the feet and injuries to areas at the base of the brain cortex affect the head and neck.

Brain Cage

---The large veins that drain blood from the brain form a sort of semi-rigid cage that limits the brain’s movement. This helps protect the brain from blow and shocks, and the pressure of blood in the veins also helps keep it in the correct shape. Like a mushroom subjected to pressure on its cap, the greatest damage is to the midbrain areas (to of the mushroom stalk), where the spinal cord meets the brain, and to the poles at the front and back of the brain.

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