Articles: brain-injuries.
-
Bicycling accidents cause many serious injuries and, in the United States, about 1300 deaths per year, mainly from head injuries. Safety helmets are widely recommended for cyclists, but convincing evidence of their effectiveness is lacking. Over one year we conducted a case-control study in which the case patients were 235 persons with head injuries received while bicycling, who sought emergency care at one of five hospitals. ⋯ In regression analyses to control for age, sex, income, education, cycling experience, and the severity of the accident, we found that riders with helmets had an 85 percent reduction in their risk of head injury (odds ratio, 0.15; 95 percent confidence interval, 0.07 to 0.29) and an 88 percent reduction in their risk of brain injury (odds ratio, 0.12; 95 percent confidence interval, 0.04 to 0.40). We conclude that bicycle safety helmets are highly effective in preventing head injury. Helmets are particularly important for children, since they suffer the majority of serious head injuries from bicycling accidents.
-
Parkinsonism associated with boxing has attracted recent media attention, yet little has been written about it in the medical literature. This report presents a typical case with a review of the literature.
-
Comparative Study
Incidence, costs, and DRG-based reimbursement for traumatic brain injured patients: a 3-year experience.
A 3-year prospective study was conducted to establish the incidence of traumatic brain injury (TBI) and related characteristics of age, sex, length of stay (LOS), intensive care unit LOS (ICU/LOS), direct hospital charges, and reimbursement using a prospective DRG-based reimbursement system. The study identified TBI patients using ICD-9-Codes. The mean LOS for the two groups of patients with intracranial injury differed (p less than 0.05). ⋯ Of the 71 DRGs assigned to the study population, 15 reimbursed more than the actual charges. The severity of TBI victims and the complexity of caring for them in a Level I trauma center generates hospital charges of which only half are reimbursed through an all-payor DRG system. Strategies to correct what could be a financial disincentive are: documenting the uniqueness of this population to justify additional reimbursement, calculating a more precise mean LOS for TBI-related DRGs to more accurately identify outliers, and calculating DRG rates for TBI diagnoses derived from a representative sample at varying severity levels and hospitalized in facilities with and without rehabilitation services.
-
The cerebral effects of alterations in plasma osmolality (Osm) and colloid oncotic pressure (COP) were examined in normocarbic, normothermic, pentobarbital-anesthetized rabbits that had been subjected to cryogenic brain injury. Monitored variables in all animals included mean arterial, right atrial, and intracranial pressures (MAP, CVP, and ICP), electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings, and cerebral blood flow (CBF). When surgical preparation was complete, a left parietal lesion was produced with liquid nitrogen. ⋯ The animals were killed by exsanguination 25 minutes after completion of plasmapheresis. The brain was removed, the hemispheres separated, weighed, and sliced, and the specific gravities (SpGr) of the regional tissue determined. There were no differences in MAP, CVP, regional CBF, or EEG activity among the groups.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
-
Serious head injury may be complicated by coagulation abnormalities. Fresh frozen plasma (FFP) has been advocated as resuscitation fluid, in patients with head injury, to prevent the development of abnormal coagulation. The efficacy of this practice has never been established. ⋯ Groups were similar in demographics, injuries, presenting Glasgow Coma Scale, and presenting hematologic parameters in serial pretreatment or posttreatment hematologic parameters (P less than .05). There were no differences between patients receiving "early" FFP, as compared with those receiving FFP later or not at all. The time of FFP administration did not appear to be critical for effective prophylaxis against coagulopathy.