Brain Injury From Closed Head Trauma

The brain is an important organ that is the hub of your personality, sensory perception, heartbeat and breathing regulation, muscular control, and many other things. Thus, when it is injured, you can lose control of all of these things and more. While it is obvious that your brain can suffer when a puncture wound breaks through the skull, it can also be damaged with closed head trauma.

Traumatic brain injury (TBI), also called intracranial injury, send an estimated one million people to the doctor's office each year. Of these, 50,000-100,000 will suffer long-term issues from the injury. These brain injuries can be caused by a variety of different factors, such as vehicular accidents, bike wrecks, pedestrian accidents, occupational accidents, falls, assaults, and many others.

The purpose of the skull is to give a hard, protective shield to the brain. However, when the head is strongly shaken, it can harm the brain without showing an external sign of damage. First, one risk of internal damage to the brain is the bleeding. As the brain is jostled about in the skull, it can tear the blood vessels that supply oxygen and nourishment to the organ.

More dangerous, as the blood continues to flow inside the skull, it can build up pressure inside the skull. Because the blood has nowhere to go, it begins to press on the brain. With prolonged pressure, parts of the brain can die off. This is the same with swelling of the brain.

Another problem is tearing. Although it seems like the brain is closely packed within the skull, there is some space that allows it to slide from one side of the skull to the other. This is often called coup-countercoup injury because damage can occur to the side that initially hits as well as the side of the rebound. For instance, if you are in a head-on car wreck, your brain will slide forward with the original momentum of the car. Then, after hitting that forward end of your brain, it will bounce back and strike the back of the skull.

This motion can tear the actual brain tissue itself. Tearing can sever the important nerve connections that keep your body functioning. For example, if the area that controls the electrical nodes in your heart is damaged, your heart can stop beating. Even if the injury does not affect an area that has physical implications, it can still alter your normal behavior or interfere with your memory, among other things.