Head Injury (cont.)
When should I contact a doctor about a head injury?
It is not normal to be unconscious or not fully awake. Emergency Medical
Services (call 911 in your areas if it is available) should be activated for
persons who have sustained an injury.
Because head injuries may also be associated with neck
injuries, victims
should not be moved unless they are in harm's way. If possible, it is important
to wait for trained medical personnel to help with immobilizing and moving the
patient.
If the patient is awake and feeling normal, it may be
worthwhile seeking medical care if there was significant trauma. These patients
may be considered to have minor head injury or concussion, and there is a
significant amount of research that has been done to decide which persons with
head injury should be admitted to the hospital for observation or have a CT
(computerized tomography) scan of the head to look for bleeding.
While there are many guidelines from which to choose, recent literature
suggests that any of them work well to help a physician decide who might have a
brain injury associated with a head injury. These guidelines apply to people
ages 2 to 65 who are fully awake and have a Glasgow Coma Scale of 15. Potential
brain injury may exist if the patient had any of the following:
- amnesia to events preceding the injury,
- vomiting,
- alcohol or drug intoxication,
- seizure,
- trauma above the collarbones,
- significant headache,
and
- dangerous mechanism like a fall more than five stairs or being hit by a car.
Those older than 65 years of age are at increased risk of bleeding
from head injury because the aging brain shrinks away from the skull, causing
the veins that bridge from the skull to the brain surface to be more easily torn.
If a person is taking a blood thinning medication such as
warfarin (Coumadin) or
clopidogrel (Plavix), they
are also at an increased risk of a brain injury, even if it is a relatively minor head trauma.
Next: How is a head injury diagnosed? »
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