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This is done as an effort to prevent injury to the spinal cord [1] in unstable spinal fractures. [2] About 0.5-3% of people with blunt trauma will have a spine injury, [3] [4] with 42-50% of injuries due to motor vehicle accidents, 27-43% from falls or work injuries, and the rest due to sports injuries (9%) or assault (11%).
Closed head injury (coup contrecoup) can damage more than the impact sites on the brain, as axon bundles may be torn or twisted, blood vessels may rupture, and elevated intracranial pressure can distort the walls of the ventricles. [7] [10] [11] Diffuse axonal injury is a key pathology in concussive brain injury. [5] The visual system may be ...
Major trauma sometimes is classified by body area; injuries affecting 40% are polytrauma, 30% head injuries, 20% chest trauma, 10%, abdominal trauma, and 2%, extremity trauma. [4] [6] Various scales exist to provide a quantifiable metric to measure the severity of injuries. The value may be used for triaging a patient or for statistical analysis.
A rapid trauma assessment goes from head to toe to find these life threats: [1] [3] [5] Cervical spinal injury; Level of consciousness; Skull fractures, crepitus, and signs of brain injury; Airway problems (although these were checked during the initial assessment, they are rechecked during the rapid trauma assessment) such as tracheal deviation
The terms traumatic brain injury and head injury are often used interchangeably in the medical literature. [1] Because head injuries cover such a broad scope of injuries, there are many causes—including accidents, falls, physical assault, or traffic accidents—that can cause head injuries.
The most common mechanism of injury is high-speed motor vehicle accidents. The injury is more likely in children due to the large size of their heads relative to their bodies, and more horizontal orientation of the occipital condyles. It represents <1% of all cervical spine injuries. [1] Several subtypes of atlanto-occipital dislocation are known.
The Injury Severity Score (ISS) is an established medical score to assess trauma severity. [1] [2] It correlates with mortality, morbidity and hospitalization time after trauma. It is used to define the term major trauma. A major trauma (or polytrauma) is defined as the Injury Severity Score being greater than 15. [2]
Whenever people have a traumatic head or neck injury, they may have a cervical fracture. This makes them at high risk for spinal cord injury, which could be exacerbated by movement of the person and could lead to paralysis or death. A common scenario for this injury would be a person suspected of having whiplash because of a car accident. [4]