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Types Of Brain Injury

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Brain injury can be as individual as people, because every case of brain injury can happen for different reasons and have different effects on people. Classifying the different types of brain injury can require a lot of research. Generally the classification starts with the two more common types of brain injury: traumatic brain injury and acquired brain injury. The levels are ranted as mild, moderate or severe. Brain injuries can also be classified as an open or closed brain injury. In this article, we'll talk about the more common types of brain injuries.

Traumatic Brain Injury

Traumatic brain injury can happen whenever something strikes the head with force. The force would be strong enough to cause the brain to move in the skull causing internal damage to the brain. It can also occur if the skull breaks and the break itself injures the brain.

There are various reasons for this type of force. It could due to a violent experience, sports injury or a variety of other causes. Any event that causes the head to be struck hard enough an cause this type of traumatic brain injury.

This type of brain injury can also occur from rapid movement back and forth, shaking the brain hard enough in the skull that it becomes damaged. This more commonly happens in auto accidents or in cases such as Shaken Baby Syndrome. The rapid movement back and forth can do severe damage to the brain.

How To Tell If You've Suffered Traumatic Brain Injury

If you have suffered a severe blow to the head, or have been in an accident where your head was violently shaken, or suspect someone else has had this type of injury, go to the emergency room immediately or call 911 for further assistance. It is recommended that you do not wait. Severe brain injuries can become worse and could become fatal if not treated immediately.

Common symptoms of traumatic brain injury are as follows:

Spinal fluid coming out of the ears or nose, looking like thin, watery liquid

Loss of consciousness

Suspected concussion - not all concussions cause loss of consciousness

Severe dizziness or loss of balance

Dilated eyes

Loss of vision, or change in vision, either improved or reduced

Slow pulse

Slow breathing

Vomiting

Lethargic

Headache

Confusion

Numbness or tingling sensations in any parts of the body

Different Types of Traumatic Brain Injury

Depending on how severe the injury is, the brain can suffer many types of injuries. Some of the more common classifications of such injuries include:

Diffuse Axonal Injury - This type of injury seems to be more common with the rapid movement of the head as occurs with Shaken Baby Syndrome. It usually happens because the skull is moving faster than the brain, causing certain structures in the brain to tear. This injury can be temporary or permanent, causing a coma or even possibly producing fatal effects.

Concussion - A concussion can be caused by violent action toward the head, by severe blows, or a whiplash effect. This type of injury causes blood vessels to stretch. It's one of the more common types of brain injuries, and a concussion can take months or even years to fully heal.

Contusion - Again, this type of traumatic brain injury will happen with a violent action at the head. The injury is caused by bruising or bleeding on the brain. If the injury is severe and there is much bruising and bleeding, it can require surgery to correct.

Acquired Brain Injury

An acquired brain injury occurs any time after birth and is not induced by birth trauma or hereditary. This type of injury occurs on a cellular level. Such an injury can affect the entire brain, rather than a limited area like a traumatic brain injury.

Such injuries can occur for any of the following reasons: air obstruction, chocking, throat swelling, near drowning, electrical shock, trauma to the head, severe blood loss from open wounds, heart attack, stroke, infectious diseases, Meningitis, AIDS, brain tumors, toxic exposure, illegal drug use, overdose of drugs, alcohol abuse.

Symptoms of Acquired Brain Injury

Because this type of brain injury is internal, you might have a harder time trying to identify the symptoms. Some of the more common symptoms for acquired brain injury are:

Impairment of function, motor skills or memory

Long lengths of time spent in a still, 'vegetative' state

Sudden or severe behavior changes or problems - depression, restlessness, anxiety, psychosis, etc

As with traumatic brain injury, if you suspect someone may have acquired brain injury, call 911 or get the person to the emergency room right away.

Different Types of Acquired Brain Injury

Anoxic Brain Injury - This type of injury occurs when the brain is deprived of oxygen. There are three types of anoxia: Anoxic which is no oxygen is getting through, anemic which means severely limited amounts of oxygen is getting through, and toxic which means something is blocking the oxygen in the blood from being used in the brain.

Hypoxic Brain Injury - This sort of brain injury occurs when the brain does get oxygen, but doesn't seem to get enough oxygen. It could happen because of lack of blood flow or blood pressure is weak.

If you should suffer from any symptoms listed, have suffered a blow to the head or you suspect that you or someone you know may have any form of brain injury, seek medical treatment right away. Call 911 if you see someone who has had an injury to the head, even if that person says they are fine. When caught early enough, many types of brain injuries are treatable.

Types Of Brain Injury

Trauma is the most common cause of acquired brain injury particularly in young people, of course there are other ways in which the brain can acquire injury, stroke is particularly common from middle age onwards then there are rarer conditions of the brain like infections and tumors. The brain is very sensitive to the amount of blood getting through to it, so anything which impedes the flow of blood to the brain or lowers oxygen to the brain, can damage it. Poisons in the blood, such as carbon monoxide from car fumes, can poison the brain. Finally there are treatments people can receive in good faith, which can damage the brain, a surgeon operating on the brain to remove a tumor can inadvertently damage it and radiation therapy, which is often used to treat malignant brain tumors, can damage the it especially in young people.

There are two broad guidelines to asses the severity of a brain injury. The first is how unconscious the patient is at their very worst, and this is measured with something called the Glasgow Coma Score, this is usually measured out of 15, 15 is fully conscious and three is as deeply unconscious as you can be and still be alive. The Glasgow Coma Score has three levels in it, one is to do with response to eye movement and eye opening, another is to do with response to speech, and the third is to do with response to movement. These three levels can all be given a number, and that gives you the total figure. Broadly speaking, any head injury in which the Glasgow Coma Score goes to eight or below is classified as a very severe brain injury.

The second things that's used to asses the severity if a brain injury is what's called the post traumatic amnesia (PTA), this is the period of time from the accident to when continuous memory returns. The PTA doesn't shrink, so if a month after a head injury a person has a PTA of an hour, its still going to be an hour a year later. The PTA has a very close connection to time taken to get back to work and it's also one of the factors in the risk of getting late traumatic epilepsy.

The temporal lobes, on either side of the brain, are concerned predominantly with memory, but they also have input into mood and emotions. The most devastating effect of serious damage to the temporal lobes is loss of memory, particularly the loss of short-term memory. The occipital lobes at the back of the brain are where vision is perceived. They're not often damaged in acquired brain injury, but when they are damaged, there can be very severe impairments of how the brain sees the world.

The cerebellum, at the back part of the head, controls coordination of movement and coordination of the muscles of the larynx (the voice box). If they're damaged the injured person will be clumsy with their arms and their legs and their speech may also be slurred and clumsy, they may also have difficulty with swallowing too.

One of the most obvious problems that can develop from a brain injury is weakness of an arm or a leg or lack of coordination of an arm or a leg. Speech and language functions can be damaged either in terms of getting out words, understanding words or just in the mechanics of producing speech, so speech may become blurred or slurred. The special senses (hearing, vision, smell and taste) are not often damaged with the exception of smell, when smell is lost the finer points of taste are also lost.

When it comes to recovering from a brain injury there is no fixed period of time. The time is longer in children in the first 10 - 15 years of life. Essentially most recovery occurs in the first 18 months. A better way of looking at it is that when someone has reached the plateau and has remained at that plateau for six months, that's probably how they're going to stay.

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About Author

Both Dave Davies & Kimberlie Hutson are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.

Dave Davies has sinced written about articles on various topics from Health Insurance, Alternative Medicine and Marriage. The law offices of Bob Schuster specialize in commercial litigation, carbon monoxide poisoning, and intellectual law. With an excellent track-record and unp. Dave Davies's top article generates over 6600 views. to your Favourites.

Kimberlie Hutson has sinced written about articles on various topics from Motorola Cell Phone, Franchise and Brain Injury. When you or someone close to you suffers from a it can be hard to understand exactly what's going on and some of the more technical medical terms.. Kimberlie Hutson's top article generates over 9900 views. to your Favourites.

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