Traumatic Brain Injury Questions and Answers

First of all, what is Traumatic Brain Injury?

Traumatic brain injury, or acquired brain injury, more commonly called a head injury, occurs when there is sudden trauma to the head causing damage to the brain.

This can happen when the head is struck by an object, say a baseball, or when the head comes to a sudden stop as in a car accident. The head receives a sudden blow causing damage to the soft tissue inside the skull. If the skull is pierced the result is caused an open head injury, but if the skull remains intact, the injury is called closed, for obvious reasons.

However the brain is damaged, the results can be horrifying. At the minor end, the victim may start having headaches, feel nauseous, experience blurred vision, maybe having memory problems and sleep disturbance, or even some mild personality differences from before the injury. If the result is moderate traumatic brain injury, then all these symptoms are magnified, with the possibility of more showing up too. For severe injury, the headaches may continue, there may be convulsions, slurred speech, one eye dilated more than the other, more confusion, more personality differences, with the senses experiencing confusion. There can be paralysis,, moderate or severe, and of course, the worst traumatic brain injury of all can lead to death.

What can be done for someone with Traumatic Brain Injury?

The best thing is to have the victim see a medical professional as soon as possible, so they can try to minimize the effects of the brain injury. This entails making sure there is an adequate supply of oxygen to the body at all times to lower the risks of brain damage. The blood pressure of the victim needs to be monitored, as this level can indicate if there are other likely problems from the injury. There may be the need for X-rays of the neck and skull to see if there are any fractures of the skull or spinal column. Depending on the severity of the injury, the patient can receive help adjusting to their situation, for example, they may have to learn to walk again, or learn to talk.

What about the Future?

The recovery from a traumatic brain injury is not completely known a few hours after the injury, in fact it may be months before the specialists can give a prognosis, and even then they may be completely wrong. This is the good news, the specialists can be and are sometimes wrong. So to elaborate a little more, there is always hope for a brain injured person, and this hope is worth clinging to at all costs.

With hope, the victim may try harder to recover the use of limbs or voice, or whatever has been lost. Without hope, why even try? Now the brain can and does sometimes help itself out when one area of the brain is damaged, but time is short, and there is more at the website below.

Is there Research on Traumatic Brain Injuries?

Yes research is going on all the time into traumatic brain injuries and the success of various treatments. A lot more needs to be known about how the brain helps itself to recover, so there is the need for a lot more research of course. Science has made tremendous strides in the past, and will continue to do so, as long as there is the funding for the research,

How can family and friends help?

As I mentioned before, hope is the single, biggest thing that anyone can use. Without hope, anyone can easily give up, but with hope, even though the process may be very slow and painful, at least there is progress. If improvement is not immediately noticeable, there may still be the chance of a recovery to some extent, once time has had a chance to do its healing. So if you know of someone with a traumatic brain injury, be patient with them, never allow them to be defeated. A positive attitude really can help with more than we realize and not just with traumatic brain injury.