Articles: brain-injuries.
-
Brain injury : [BI] · Oct 1994
Family functioning, social support and depression after traumatic brain injury.
Functional outcome after traumatic brain injury (TBI) is thought to be dependent upon effective social support and avoidance of depressive episodes. Research indicates that post-injury changes often occur in the family's functioning, hence impacting the family's ability to provide the needed social support. Social support, in turn, has been hypothesized to work as a buffer between significant life event and levels of depressive symptoms. ⋯ Thirty-nine persons who had sustained TBI were interviewed to assess their family functioning, perceived social support, and current depressive symptomatology. The results showed that the effective use of problem-solving and behavioural coping strategies by the family in response to TBI was significantly related to lower levels of depression in the person who sustained the TBI. However, perceived social support was not predictive of depression.
-
Hypothermia is of proven benefit in cerebral ischemia, and may be of benefit in blunt head injury. Peritoneal dialysis is a fast, effective method of inducing generalized hypothermia. ⋯ Hypothermia was associated with prompt control of temperature and intracranial pressure. Peritoneal dialysis is a useful method for inducing hypothermia in the blunt head-injured patient.
-
AJNR Am J Neuroradiol · Sep 1994
Prevalence of MR evidence of diffuse axonal injury in patients with mild head injury and normal head CT findings.
To assess the prevalence of MR evidence for diffuse axonal injury at 1.5 T in patients with normal head CT findings after mild head injury. ⋯ MR shows evidence of diffuse axonal injury in some patients with normal head CT findings after mild head injury. These lesions may represent the pathologic substrate underlying the postconcussion syndrome that occurs in many patients with moderate to severe head injury.
-
Critical care medicine · Sep 1994
Cerebral lactate-oxygen index in acute brain injury with acute anemia: assessment of false versus true ischemia.
To evaluate the occurrence of global cerebral ischemia in acute brain trauma with acute anemia by combined measurements of cerebral hemodynamics, oxygenation, and lactate production. ⋯ In acute brain injury with acute anemia, global cerebral ischemia is a rare finding. However, false cerebral ischemia may be frequently found, if assessed by the lactate-oxygen index, because the denominator of the index (the arteriojugular oxygen content difference) frequently decreases as a function of decreasing hemoglobin, thus yielding false calculated ischemic high values for lactate-oxygen index despite normal cerebral oxygenation and lactate production.
-
Recent work suggests that increased intracranial pressure (ICP) following brain injury and shock is related to increased central venous pressure (CVP) following resuscitation. ⋯ These data suggest that brain edema formation in the injured hemisphere is related to MAP and not CVP, but variability in MAP accounts for only 29% of the variability in CWC and ICP, suggesting the importance of factors other than hydrostatic pressure in determining the amount of edema and the ICP after brain injury. Previous work demonstrating the significant correlation of polymorphonuclear leukocyte infiltration with ICP (r = 0.71, p < 0.001) and with CWC (r = -0.63, p < 0.001) suggests that inflammation may be one of these factors.