Hit My Head Agains the Wall
While grabbing dinner one dark, your friend kneels downward to tie his shoe and, equally he sits support, smacks his caput against the table—hard. He feels a little dazed, only insists he's okay. It doesn't help that the restaurant has the game on—he'southward heard enough almost the "concussion crunch" among NFL players. Merely your buddy didn't get sacked past some 350-pound lineman. He just rang his bell in a totally boilerplate, klutzy way. So how worried should he be?
Showtime: What'south a concussion?
Here's a caveat that'due south often lost in news coverage of concussions: A "concussion" is not a medical diagnosis. It's not like a stroke or a heart set on where the body undergoes a process that has a ready path, during which medical professionals, in all cases, must arbitrate to mitigate damage. "Proverb y'all 'have a concussion' doesn't mean anything specific," says Douglas H. Smith, director of the Middle for Brain Injury and Repair at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman Schoolhouse of Medicine. "It's more like an opinion that there is damage to the brain's network." Considering of this, the term "traumatic brain injury" is sometimes preferred. The personality-transforming, mentally-stagnating effects of head trauma so oftentimes in the news usually refer to the effects of repeated concussions endured over years by wrestlers, boxers, and football game players. A unmarried instance is a different type of medical situation, Smith says. Some reports judge that in that location are four to five million new cases of traumatic brain injury in the US each year. But doctors are still learning how to tape and universally classify such injuries, Smith says, so those numbers are probably low. The furnishings of most of these are not severe and laissez passer in a few hours, Smith says.
When are head injuries serious?
There are rare cases where a single hit to the head causes cerebral hemorrhaging (more on that in a moment). Bleeding inside the skull presses downward on the brain, requiring immediate emergency care. By and large, your friend will know when he's experiencing this—from the seizures, incoherence, and airsickness that can accompany it. "It'southward a lot rarer than a typical concussion and the symptoms are usually more extreme," says Richard A. Figler, co-medical manager of the Concussion Center at the Cleveland Dispensary. If your friend is experiencing dizziness and headaches and is unsure if it'southward serious plenty to warrant a copay and a doctor's time, he has a luxury that victims of center attacks and strokes don't: He can wait and come across if things persist or become worse. "See how symptoms are in an hour or so," Figler says. "It doesn't make a divergence in the issue." In most cases, the impairment from a concussion is over after the whack. Fifty-fifty though the effects tin linger and necessitate months of rehab, there's ordinarily not much an emergency physician can practice in the immediate aftermath of a balmy head injury.
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Symptoms to monitor include headache, dizziness, defoliation, fatigue, nausea, slurred speech, ringing in the ears, temporary loss of consciousness, and amnesia about events leading up to the injury. The concussion-determining "sidelines tests" of sports teams oftentimes include the Maddocks Score questionnaire, which asks some basic short-term memory questions: "What venue are nosotros at today?" "Who scored last in this lucifer?" "Did your team win the last game?"
The effects of a bump to the head
The effects of a concussion can besides come on days after the event. "While you might feel okay the solar day after bumping your head, symptoms could later on develop the next couple days with different action," says Alicia Sufrinko, a neuropsychologist in the Academy of Pittsburgh Medical Center's Sports Medicine Concussion Programme. In some cases, Sufrinko says, the person will not notice serious impairment until attempting an action requiring focus, like reading or using a computer. Symptoms may also emerge when the person enters an surroundings requiring more mental engagement, like a workplace or crowded street. For those with long-term impairment from a concussion, there'southward an exhaustive schedule of rehab work and medical intervention ahead. Smith says that considering the brain is so mysterious and neurologists are just beginning to understand the effects of trauma, there's no definitive prognosis or gear up of expectations.
Natasha Richardson and 'Talk & Dice Syndrome'
In 2009, actress Natasha Richardson was skiing near Quebec when she tumbled and hit her head. She seemed fine and casually returned to her hotel, where she walked and conversed normally. Hours later, Richardson complained of a severe headache. She was airlifted to a New York hospital and, a few days later, died from hemorrhaging in the encephalon. The Richardson case horrified many people into thinking a tiny fall could silently start a mechanism towards death. Some news stories included the terrifying non-medical term "talk and die syndrome." While at that place are other cases like Richardson's, usually cognitive hemorrhaging does not play out in such a tranquility fashion, Figler says. Seizures and vomiting are not uncommon when blood is putting force per unit area on the encephalon. It's peculiarly important to look for hemorrhaging in elderly patients and people taking blood-thinning medication, he adds. But in most instances, y'all'd know if y'all have a situation as dire as a cerebral hemorrhage.
Treating a head injury
Lie downward for a while. You aren't losing precious time equally y'all would exist if this were a stroke. If, a few hours afterwards you hit your head, you still experience dazed, can't focus, can't recount the solar day's events, or you feel some other powerful and persistent symptom, become a ride to the ER. Read This Side by side: Concussions Tin can Hurt More Than Your Brain
Source: https://www.vice.com/en/article/8x5zzb/how-worried-should-i-be-if-i-hit-my-head-really-hard
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