Urgent Bilateral Craniotomies for the Patients with Severe Head Injury

Tension Pneumocephalus Following Bilateral Craniotomies

Pneumocephalus is defined as a collection of air within the cranial cavity. It is a common finding following head injury with skull base fracture and neurosurgical procedures. Tension pneumocephalus is a rare complication. The diagnosis is clinical and radiological with the characteristic Mount Fuji sign seen on computed tomography (CT). It is a neurosurgical emergency, and early recognition an...

Long term outcome in patients with severe head injury and bilateral fixed dilated pupils.

Patients with severe head injury with bilateral dilated unreactive pupils are considered to have a grave prognosis. Hence proper planning and aggressive management becomes mandatory for achieving good results. We present the outcome of consecutive 166 patients with severe head injury, admitted between January 1996 and December 2000 and analysed retrospectively. All the patients had an initial G...

Treatment for severe head injury.

Difficulties in establishing the value of certain treatments for head injury are reviewed. An analysis of 1000 severely head injured patients, managed by varying methods in three different countries, showed that certain treatments were more often used in the most severely injured patients. Even when the severity of injury was taken account of, it appeared that the use of steroids and tracheosto...

Intracranial pressure monitoring in patients with severe head injury.

Increased intracranial pressure (ICP) has an adverse effect on the clinical course of patients with severe head injuries. Direct intracranial measurement is the only method of knowing the precise ICP. At the Maryland Institute for Emergency Medical Services Systems, elevations in ICP are treated according to an aggressive protocol. Our experience with this protocol has led to the following conc...

Severe bilateral anterior cingulum injury in patients with mild traumatic brain injury.