Head Injury

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athletic injuries and assaults and that these people tend to be "generally young (10 to 40 years), male (60 to 80%), and healthy" (Miller, 1994, p.321).

Head injury, as a generic term, is commonly defined as any injury of the scalp, skull (incorporating the cranium and facial bones) or brain (Ammons, 1990; Hickey, 1997; Jastremski, 1996). It can be further categorized into the actual location and type of injury or by the mechanism of injury. Head injuries can therefore cover vast fields of pathophysiological events which imply varying levels of morbidity and mortality.

This article is the case study of a young, previously healthy male who sustained a severe closed head injury from an alleged assault and was admitted to a major teaching hospital's Intensive Therapy Unit (ITU) for a period of five days. The patient will be presented by explaining the alleged circumstances leading to his head injury and his admission via the emergency department to ITU. The relevant ...

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the emergency department, it was noted that John had sustained a head injury with an associated loss of consciousness and seizure activity. On arrival in the emergency department, John was able to move all his limbs, was uttering foreign words, and was noted as being "combative". His pupils were equal at three millimeters and reactive to light and John's conscious state was assigned a Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) of 10.

The Glasgow Coma Scale, while not a complete neurological examination, is an internationally accepted tool for assessing patients with any indication of actual or potential alteration in their level of consciousness. The GCS which was originally devised in Glasgow in ...

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