Articles: brain-injuries.
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Brain injury : [BI] · Dec 1996
Patients with traumatic brain injury referred to a rehabilitation and re-employment programme: social and professional outcome for 508 Finnish patients 5 or more years after injury.
We studied influence of age and educational level before injury on the social and vocational outcome among a group of traumatic brain injury (TBI) patients with post-injury problems in their education and employment. Patients with TBI, followed up for at least 5 years, and who were admitted to a rehabilitation and re-employment programme, were selected for evaluation of long-term outcome. We used the Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) scores at the time of emergency admission to the hospital to measure brain injury severity. ⋯ Our patients were selected from the TBI population as survivors with problems in education and re-employment. Those with severe injury sustained early in life (childhood and early teens) coupled with poor educational attainment had relatively worse social and vocational outcome; better outcomes were enjoyed by those severely injured individuals whose injuries were sustained later (late teens or early adulthood). In the groups of patients with moderate and mild brain injuries such a relationship was not found between age or pre-injury education and outcome.
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Various biological signals show nonpulsatile, slow rhythmic oscillations. These include arterial blood pressure (aBP), blood flow velocity in cerebral arteries, intracranial pressure (ICP), cerebral microflow, and cerebral tissue PO2. Generation and interrelations between these rhythmic fluctuations remained unclear. The aim of this study was to analyze whether stable dynamic interrelations in the low-frequency range exist between these different variables, and if they do, to analyze their exact time delay. ⋯ These results strongly support Rosner's theory that ICP B-waves are the autoregulatory response of spontaneous fluctuations of cerebral perfusion pressure. There is casuistic evidence that failure of autoregulation significantly modifies time delay and the correlation between aBP and ICP.
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Journal of neurotrauma · Dec 1996
Regional generation of leukotriene C4 after experimental brain injury in anesthetized rats.
Regional concentrations of leukotriene C4 and extravasation of Evans blue were measured after lateral fluid-percussion brain injury in rats. Tissue levels of LTC4 were elevated in the injured cortex at 10 min, 30 min, and 1 h after injury; these levels returned to normal by 2 h after injury. Increases in the levels of LTC4 were also observed in the ipsilateral hippocampus after brain injury, and these elevations persisted for 2 h after injury. ⋯ A substantial extravasation of Evans blue was observed only in the ipsilateral cortex and hippocampus at 3 h and 6 h after brain injury. Although a temporal association between LTC4 and blood-brain barrier (BBB) breakdown is suggested by these data, no cause-and-effect relationship has been addressed in this study. However, it is possible that, as is true for cerebral ischemia, LTC4 may play a role as a mediator in the BBB breakdown associated with fluid-percussion brain injury in rats.
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Journal of neurosurgery · Dec 1996
Magnetic resonance imaging-monitored acute blood-brain barrier changes in experimental traumatic brain injury.
The authors posit that cellular edema is the major contributor to brain swelling in diffuse head injury and that the contribution of vasogenic edema may be overemphasized. The objective of this study was to determine the early time course of blood-brain barrier (BBB) changes in diffuse closed head injury and to what extent barrier permeability is affected by the secondary insults of hypoxia and hypotension. The BBB disruption was quantified and visualized using T1-weighted magnetic resonance (MR) imaging following intravenous administration of the MR contrast agent gadolinium-diethylenetriamine pentaacetic acid. ⋯ In conclusion, the authors suggest that closed head injury is associated with a rapid and transient BBB opening that begins at the time of the trauma and lasts no more than 30 minutes. It has also been shown that addition of posttraumatic secondary insult-hypoxia and hypotension-prolongs the time of BBB breakdown after closed head injury. The authors further conclude that MR imaging is an excellent technique to follow (time resolution 1-1.5 minutes) the evolution of trauma-induced BBB damage noninvasively from as early as a few minutes up to hours or even longer after the trauma occurs.
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La Radiologia medica · Dec 1996
[Computerized tomography in craniocerebral, maxillofacial, cervical, and spinal gunshot wounds. Part II--Clinical contribution and medico- legal aspects].
To assess the diagnostic and medicolegal contribution of Computed Tomography (CT) in patients with craniocerebral, maxillofacial, neck and spine gunshot wounds, we submitted to CT 106 patients with gunshot wounds examined over a 7-year period (February, 1988 to December, 1994). Twenty-four of them had craniocerebral injuries (23%), 9 maxillofacial (8%), 8 neck (8%) and 10 vertebral (9%) injuries. Emergency CT demonstrated the mechanism of the injury, the bullet path and site, the site of bone and/or metallic fragments, and damage extent. ⋯ High Resolution Computed Tomography (HRCT) was useful in locating minute orbitary retrobulbar and intraspinal fragments. Magnetic Resonance (MR) Imaging in postoperative patients proved a valuable tool to assess the extent of spinal cord damage. To conclude, CT is a useful technique to examine the patients with gunshot wounds, which helps plan adequate treatment and solve complex medicolegal problems.