Brain Injury: What You Need to Know
With the exception of a few highly publicized cases involving celebrities such as actor Gary Busey and singer Barbara Mandrell, brain injuries don’t get the attention of many other medical calamities. A recent public opinion poll found that a third of Americans aren’t even familiar with the term “brain injury.”
Yet brain injuries are the leading cause of death and disability among U.S. youth, and more than 1 million Americans of all ages are treated in hospital emergency rooms each year for these injuries. An additional 230,000 are hospitalized, 80,000 of whom are permanently disabled. About 50,000 die each year. Indeed, brain injuries occur more frequently than breast cancer, AIDS, multiple sclerosis and spinal cord injuries.
How Injuries Happen
More than 5.3 million Americans, or about 2% of the U.S. population, live with a disability as a result of a traumatic brain injury. And almost all brain injuries can be prevented through simple measures, such as wearing seat belts, not drinking and driving, and wearing helmets when riding motorcycles or doing sports activities.
The causes of brain injuries are:
* Transportation accidents (cars, bikes, horses): 48.9%
* Falls: 25.8%
* Firearms (assaults, suicide and suicide attempts): 9.7%
* Assaults: 7.5%
* Other causes: 7.4%
* Unknown: 0.6%
Getting Care
If something serious happens to you and you’re unconscious, there’s not much you can do to influence which hospital emergency room you are transported to. But if you’re with someone who suffers severe head trauma, make sure they are transported to the nearest Level I trauma center, which is equipped to handle the most serious injuries.
Most Level I trauma centers in Southern California, including Cedars-Sinai, Long Beach Memorial, L.A. County-USC and UCLA, follow some or all of the guidelines for the treatment of severe head injury. A trauma surgeon is supposed to be on duty at all times and a neurosurgeon available within 20 minutes.
“They’ll do better if they reach a center that has an established protocol for treating head injuries,” says Dr. Daniel F. Kelly, a neurosurgeon and co-director of the brain injury program at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Torrance. “Unfortunately, because of the sheer numbers, there’s just not enough qualified trauma centers to go around.”
For more information on treatment guidelines, check the Web site for the Brain Trauma Foundation, https://www.braintrauma.org.
