Deciphering the major doubts of cranial trauma

  Craniofacial injury (head injury) refers to injuries caused by violence to the skull. It includes soft tissue head injury, skull fracture and brain injury. Among them, brain injury has serious consequences and should be especially vigilant. The cause of the disease is common in accidental traffic accidents, industrial injuries or firearms operations.  Soft tissue injuries in the subscalp hematoma more, without special treatment, often can be self-healing. Scalp lacerations bleed heavily and should be cleared and sutured early.  Figure 1: Shows the different mechanisms of injury leading to different sites of craniofacial injury, with the sites of brain tissue damage in red.  Line-like fractures of the skull cap do not require treatment. Larger depressed fractures should be repaired early. Skull base fractures often cause cerebrospinal fluid nasal or ear leakage should be considered as open cranial injury, which is highly susceptible to retrograde infection, so the treatment of cerebrospinal fluid leakage is drainage without blockage, anti-inflammation to be self-healing, and a few non-healing cases can be elective surgical repair.  Primary brain injury is commonly concussion, the patient has a positive history of trauma, loss of consciousness immediately after the injury, a short period of time awake, often can not recall the instantaneous process of injury, symptomatic treatment can be healed, brain contusion and contusion is the top of the occipital landing to form a hedge injury, brain tissue in the cranial block movement, and the anterior cranial concavity and middle cranial concave bottom friction, resulting in brain tissue contusion or contusion, can cause traumatic subarachnoid hemorrhage (headache, nausea , vomiting, neck resistance, and lumbar puncture may have bloody cerebrospinal fluid), which should generally be closely observed for timely detection of intracranial hematoma.  Secondary brain injury commonly includes cerebral edema and intracranial hematoma. On the basis of brain injury, vasogenic cerebral edema is formed, which can be local or whole-brain; if the contusion is heavy and local bleeding is more frequent, subdural hematoma or intracerebral hematoma can be formed. If the temporal skull fracture damages the middle dural artery, an epidural hematoma may be formed. All of the above pathological changes can increase the intracranial pressure secondary to the increase of intracranial pressure, and even form brain herniation, which is life-threatening.  Figure 2: Cerebral hemorrhage within the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain due to craniocerebral trauma.  Cerebral edema should be treated conservatively (e.g., dehydration, administration of hormones and restriction of intake). Intracranial hematoma is, in principle, a craniotomy for hematoma removal, and it should be performed early, as the prognosis is dangerous once brain herniation is formed.