The Treatment of Head Injuries

Abstract

Trauma has become the endemic disease of modem civilisation.  Head injury occurs in 70% of all injuries and causes death in 25%.  The number of significant head injuries is rising year by year as shown by the table of the figures at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh.

TABLE 1

Year             Number

1962            830

1963            691

1964            941

1965            1020

1966           1251

In no other system of the body is a knowledge of the functional anatomy more essential than in the diagnosis and treatment of the head-injured.  The brain is contained loosely within the bony skull. It is separated from it by the meninges and by a subarachnoid layer of cerebro-spinal fluid (C.S.F.).  The brain maintains continuity with the bony skeleton by means of the cerebral veins which pass from the cortical surface to the dural sinuses. The width of the space between brain and skull depends on brain bulk.  Thus in states of cerebral atrophy due to age or disease the space will be increased.