We know that every brain injury is unique, but in all cases, the acute care phase
can be very important to a successful recovery.
Dr. Bazarian, does it matter what hospital or emergency center a person is taken to
after an accident, and what should they look for in order to get the best outcome?
I think it's important for people who've had traumatic brain injury,
and this is especially true with the more severe ends of brain injury,
that they go to an emergency department that has the ability to perform a CAT scan rapidly,
and then has a neurosurgeon that can be standing by ready to remove a blood clot
that could be potentially life threatening.
Now when someone is brought to the ER with a brain injury, what are the first concerns?
We have several concerns when someone is first brought to emergency,
and obviously these concerns will be a little bit different for someone at the milder end of things
than at the severe end of brain injury.
At the severe ends of traumatic brain injury--so someone who comes in
and appears that they're in a coma, we're very concerned with securing their airway
and making sure that they're breathing properly.
Those 2 things are very important for limiting any susequent brain injury
that they might have, and then thirdly, we also need to maintain their blood pressure.
We do all these things as quickly as we can so that we can move on to getting the CAT scan,
which is kind of a picture of their brain--really helps us know what we need to do next.
Now at the milder ends of brain injury--the concussion--we're focused more on
getting a CAT scan and figuring out what to do after that.
Show transcript | Print transcript
Getting to an ER is crucial after a TBI, especially for an injury that is on the more severe side. The quicker doctors can do a CAT scan of the brain, the quicker they can act on their diagnosis.
This is an excerpt from BrainLine's webcast After the Injury: Acute Care and TBI. See full webcast here.
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