Page Utilities
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (page 1 of 3) Page 1 of 3
About Brain Injury
A blow or jolt to the head can disrupt the normal function of the brain. This is called a brain injury, or concussion. Doctors may describe these injuries as “mild” because concussions are usually not life threatening. Even so, the effects of a concussion can be serious.
After a concussion, some people lose consciousness or are “knocked out” for a short time, but not always — you can have a brain injury without losing consciousness.
Because the brain is very complex, every brain injury is different. Some symptoms may appear right away, while others may not show up for days or weeks after the concussion. Sometimes the injury makes it hard for people to recognize or to admit that they are having problems.
The signs of concussion can be subtle. Early on, problems may be missed by patients, family members, and doctors. People may look fine even though they’re acting or feeling differently.
Because all brain injuries are different, so is recovery. Most people with mild injuries recover fully, but it can take time. Some symptoms can last for days, weeks, or longer.
In general, recovery is slower in older persons. Also, persons who have had a concussion in the past may find that it takes longer to recover from their current injury.
This article explains what can happen after a concussion, how to get better, and where to go for more information and help when needed.
Medical Help
People with a concussion need to be seen by a doctor. Most people with concussions are treated in an emergency department or a doctor’s office. Some people must stay in the hospital overnight for further treatment.
Sometimes the doctors may do a CT scan of the brain or do other tests to help diagnose your injuries. Even if the brain injury doesn’t show up on these tests, you may still have a concussion.
Your doctor will send you home with important instructions to follow. For example, your doctor may ask someone to wake you up every few hours during the first night and day after your injury.
Be sure to carefully follow all your doctor’s instructions. If you are already taking any medicines — prescription, over-the-counter, or “natural remedies” — or if you are drinking alcohol or taking illicit drugs, tell your doctor. Also, talk with your doctor if you are taking “blood thinners” (anticoagulant drugs) or aspirin, because these drugs may increase your chances of complications. If it’s all right with your doctor, you may take acetaminophen (for example, Tylenol®* or Panadol®*) for headache or neck pain.
Danger Signs — Adults
In rare cases, along with a concussion, a dangerous blood clot may form on the brain and crowd the brain against the skull. Contact your doctor or emergency department right away if, after a blow or jolt to the head, you have any of these danger signs:
- Headaches that get worse
- Weakness, numbness, or decreased coordination
- Repeated vomiting
The people checking on you should take you to an emergency department right away if you:
- Cannot be awakened
- Have one pupil — the black part in the middle of the eye — larger than the other
- Have convulsions or seizures
- Have slurred speech
- Are getting more and more confused, restless, or agitated
Danger Signs — Children
Take your child to the emergency department right away if the child has received a blow or jolt to the head and:
- Has any of the danger signs for adults
- Won’t stop crying
- Can’t be consoled
- Won’t nurse or eat Although you should contact your child’s doctor if your child vomits more than once or twice, vomiting is more common in younger children and is less likely to be an urgent sign of danger than it is in an adult.
Symptoms of Brain Injury
Persons of All Ages
“I just don’t feel like myself.”
The type of brain injury called a concussion has many symptoms. These symptoms are usually temporary, but may last for days, weeks, or even longer. Generally, if you feel that “something is not quite right,” or if you’re “feeling foggy,” you should talk with your doctor.
Here are some of the symptoms of a concussion:
- Low-grade headaches that won’t go away
-
Having more trouble than usual:
- Remembering things
- Paying attention or concentrating
- Organizing daily tasks
- Making decisions and solving problems
- Slowness in thinking, acting, speaking, or reading
- Getting lost or easily confused
- Neck pain
- Feeling tired all the time, lack of energy
-
Change in sleeping pattern:
- Sleeping for much longer periods of time than before
- Trouble sleeping or insomnia
- Loss of balance, feeling light-headed or dizzy
-
Increased sensitivity to:
- Sounds
- Lights
- Distractions
- Blurred vision or eyes that tire easily
- Loss of sense of taste or smell
- Ringing in the ears
- Change in sexual drive
-
Mood changes:
- Feeling sad, anxious, or listless
- Becoming easily irritated or angry for little or no reason
- Lack of motivation
Young Children
Although children can have the same symptoms of brain injury as adults, it is harder for young children to let others know how they are feeling. Call your child’s doctor if your child seems to be getting worse or if you notice any of the following:
- Listlessness, tiring easily
- Irritability, crankiness
- Change in eating or sleeping patterns
- Change in the way they play
- Change in the way they perform or act at school
- Lack of interest in favorite toys
- Loss of new skills, such as toilet training
- Loss of balance, unsteady walking
From the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. www.cdc.gov.
*Use of trade names is for identification only and does not imply endorsement by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Comments [12]
Sometimes it is made worse by the providers..............and psychologists that do not have enough medical knowledge to help people get the treatment they need instead of giving them a mental illness they don't have............and performing a mental privacy rape............asking too many personal questions. Or at teaching hospitals............performing tests such as speech iq garbage when a patient has said no.....is strung out on drugs such as fentaynl morphine lortab and other drugs............or has gone with out pain meds for 09 hours.....they just want to use people as lab rats....
It appears the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is just as ignorant as most doctors, including those in the UK. The errors in this article are crucial. They (CDC&P) said <Most people with mild injuries recover fully, but it can take time. Some symptoms can last for days, weeks, or longer.> Nobody who suffers a concussion ever recovers fully. They may recover from acute symptoms, dizziness, head aches, etc. but there will always be some residual damage or weakness in their brain. This was observed in the 1970’s by Dr Dorothy Gronwall in New Zealand. The symptoms may not be evident until there are other stressors to the brain but some underlying damage will remain. They also state <Sometimes the doctors may do a CT scan of the brain or do other tests to help diagnose your injuries. Even if the brain injury doesn’t show up on these tests, you may still have a concussion.> Rarely will there be any evidence of a concussion or other mild Traumatic brain injury on a CT or MRI. The damage is just too microscopic to show up on these imaging technologies. Clinical diagnosis is the most important. Even when clinical diagnosis is negative for concussion, possible/probable concussion should be noted in the medical records. The patient’s self-reporting of stars, dizziness, confusion, or other symptoms after the head impact is enough for a diagnosis of concussion. Many patients get lost in the system because their possible/probable concussion was not noted in their medical records. This leads to later symptoms being dismissed, discounted, or attributed to other causation. This often leads to a diagnosis of somatoform disorder which can negatively impact the future health care of the patient. It is important for the treating facility to do a follow-up, either in person in a clinic or by phone call to determine if symptoms have later developed or returned. Relying on the patient to return to the clinic based on their own judgment is problematic. Research shows that minor bleeds become most evident at about 72 hours. An increase in symptoms during this time period can possibly justify a new imaging study.
i have read your comments and post and hopefully once i show these to my son he will try to get some therapy he was dropped from a over pass six years ago and was in a functional coma where he was catatonic but had the ability to speak and semi understand his surrondings but his whole personality changed once he woke up and from what i read here today i see it can be helped if you se somebody
I had a concussion about 13 years ago, my question for you is, am I fine now? I feel fine, most days
God has a funny way of getting our attention. I know what I have to do now. THANK YOU ALL FOR SHARING YOUR STORIES.BEYOND THE dOCTORS THERE IS NEVER COMPINSATION FOR LOOSING YOUR LIFE AND STILL BEING ALIVE
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN I HAVE HAD A BRAIN INJURY IN OCT 2007 AND WAS OUT FOR 3 DAYS STRAIGHT 4TH DAY CRAWLED TO THE BED STILL DIDNT NOT NO I WAS HIT ON HEAD UNTIL I WOKE UP AND LOOKED IN MIRROR AND THEN NOTICED DIDNT END UP IN HOSPITAL UNTIL MAYBE 6 OR 7 DAYS LATER CAN SOME ONE POINME ON WHAT TO DO ??? I HAVE NO INSURANCE AND ALWAYS GETTING HEAD ACHES MOOD SWINGS MY WIFE TELLS ME AND LOTTA OTHER SYMPTOMS AND VERY FORGETFUL ! PLEASE SOMEONE HELP IM 44 YEARS OLD AND VERY DEPRESSED AND CRY A LOT ABOUT THIS PLEASE HELP ALSO IF ANYONE CAN HELP PLEASE LET ME NO AND I WILL GIVE MY EMAIL ADDRESS I DONT HAVE NO CLUE ON WHAT TO DO AT ALL DAVE
I am amazed at this. I read up on concussions and learned what the symptoms are, and that it is crucial to get medical attention and rehab as soon as possible; yet, according to your comments, it is the same as with my good friend...dizzy, weak, unbalanced, nausea...and yet none of the Drs. seem concerned. They do not think there was a concussion sustained (rear-ended by a semi, no skid marks, and forced into a line of three more stopped vehicles); 150 stitches in the back of the head, with deep abrasion on forehead. But a concussion? Doubtful. So, what do you do? Pray. Pray for a competent Dr. to help you out. And believe in the Power of God--then live as a Witness to Him. God bless each of you with a healing. Judy, IN
thank for this l just go troht l problen with is consornig is my brain no body what is hapenig tu my son they said is depretion boooo please help me australia
Guy, I so know your situation as I was a student at Harvard and had an accident and was treated very similar. After five years of living with this, my conclusions are that the medical industry has no idea in general how to look at this, and honestly after going to one of the best rehab facilities in the world, they have no idea how to treat it.... seriously, they don't. They cannot prove anything by looking at exrays because to them it does not exist. When you look at the fact that anything that truly exists is made up of energy and matter. We are energy and it damages our brains, system, and energy flow. I was healed by a tremendous woman who healed her own daughter with TBI from a car accident. Please contact me at lcampbell@pvgasset.com and I can help you... trust me. Laura
This is all interesting. I live in UK and was rear-ended at high speed three years ago. I fatigue easily, even now, and have a lot of very irritating deficits such as clumsiness, forgetfulness, lack of concenration, lack of smell & taste, etc. I am 62 and accept that it's not as serious as if it had happened to me as a young man. There as been ongoing litigation, for relatively trivial money, maybe 100,000 sterling tops. But, having had an extensive series of tests which supported my claim, my lawsuit was stopped in its tracks then other day by our own Expert Medical Witness, a Professor of Neuropsychiatry at a London Unversity who examined me and then wrote the following report: "The first question to address is did the accident result in a brain injury. Using the standard parameters to make such an evaluation, namely the presence of unconsciousess, retrograde or post traumatic amnesia there is no evidence that he displays any problems in these domains. Neither was there a head injury sustained in the index event. These parameters clearly indicate that there was no head injury sustained and thus on this basis it is difficult to account for neurological type symptoms which he now presents with in terms of any brain injury sustained in the accident. The overwhelming evidence is that he did not sustain a brain injury." I had reported that after the crash I just sat in my seat completely dazed and seeing stars for anything from ten seconds to a minute, (I was on my own) but did not lose consciousness or memories of the event. I find it very frustrating. The inference is either that I am making it all up, or else that coincidental Ily with the week of the crash I developed a whole suite of idiopathic neurological problems. Apologies for ranting. Guy
i have a concussion. this article has helped me to understand!!!!!!!!!!!!!! thank you for writting this. christy linnean james
See All TBI Topics
thanks for the comments about somatoform, medical \"experts\" noted my husband has a mild TBI, he has no working memory pre or post accident, has ptsd and they tried to say he has picked up a somatoform disorder...symptoms are all brain injury and also consistent with hypoxia....it happens over time and is not instant so you may notice your husband/wife etc decline over time...the time peiod for healing they have given me keeps being extended they really dont have a clue..if you get a TBI read \"I\'ll carry the fork...\" its like being an outsider looking into your life...
Jan 5th, 2012 5:17am