“TRAUMATIC BRAIN INJURY”
SANDRA GILL
(UNIVERSITY)
(DATE)
Traumatic Brain Injury
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a life-threatening health issue in the United States. Every year million Americans suffer from traumatic brain injury. Cases of this frequently result to death, while those who survive are left with serious disabilities. Every twenty-one seconds, one person in the United States endured TBI. In 2013 alone, 1.5 million Americans suffered from traumatic brain injuries (Ross et. al, 2014).
Traumatic brain injury is described as a change in brain function or other indication of brain pathology, due to an external force. TBI’s can be categorized as congenital, perinatal, or acquired. In congenital and perinatal cases of TBIs, children are born with such diseases and or physical abnormalities. The subcategories of an acquired TBI are non-traumatic and traumatic. From there traumatic brain injuries are broke down into two more sub-categories called open and closed injuries. Open head injury is a skull fracture that is driven into the brain caused by high-momentum causes or objects to the head while a closed head injury is a mild physical trauma, but still keeping the skull intact (Chew, et. al, 2014).
TBI is categorized according to its severity (1) concussion, (2) contusion and (3) laceration. Concussion is defined as caused by a blow to the head that bruises the brain. The bruising causes tiny blood vessels, or capillaries, in the brain to rupture, which compromises blood supply to the neurons supported by those capillaries. Contusion is defined as head trauma in which the head is jarred with such force that the brain becomes shifted in the skull and is badly bruised. And finally, laceration is defined as tearing of the brain, particularly the outer surface of the brain. Objects such as bullets that penetrate the skull will enter the brain and rip through brain tissue, unraveling neural connections and causing massive bleeding, or