Loss of Consciousness from Brain Injury Versus Amnesia Essays -- Biolo

Loss of Consciousness from Brain Injury Versus Amnesia Brain injuries have been traditionally classified as mild, moderate and severe based upon the duration of loss of consciousness and memory. More recently these classifications have been reconsidered based upon the length and severity of amnesia (4).. How can you measure loss of consciousness and memory? How does the length of amnesia better predict the severity of a brain injury versus the traditional method of classifying brain injury based upon the length of loss consciousness? Head trauma is by far the most common cause of amnesia, but the condition often goes unrecognized as patients more serious medical problems become the foremost concern (3).. Traumatic amnesia is brain damage caused by a severe non-penetrative blow to the head, such as in a road accident. It can lead to anything from a loss of consciousness for a few seconds to coma. During post-traumatic amnesia, a patient usually fails to remember not only the accident, but also all information learned for several years bef ore the brain injury. A severe blow to the head is likely to cause loss of consciousness lasting seconds up to months. This state of puzzlement and confusion can pass with time for many cases (1).. A brain is exposed to injury as a result of external forces, which are directed to the head. Those forces can include a blow to the head, the head hitting something, and a rapid acceleration/deceleration movement, such as whiplash (2).The extent of brain injury can be classified as either a state resulting in coma or not. This distinction is used not because the ultimate outcomes are necessarily different, but because coma resulting in a head injury can evoke "the vigil between life and death."... ...for everyone (1,2). WWW Sources 1)Anatomy of a Head Injury, Description http://www.ahs.uwaterloo.ca/~cahr/headfall.html 2)Welcome to the Brain.com, http://www.brain.com/brain/ 3) Traumatic Brain Injury , http://courses.smsu.edu/jas188f/316/TBI.htm 4) Loss of Consciousness http://subtlebraininjury.com/noloc.html 5)What is Amnesia?, http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro01/web1/www.psy.ohio-state.edu/psy312/amnesia2.html 6) Story about Amnesia , http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/englsih/health/medicalnotes/newsid167000/167771.stm 7) Amnesia , http://www.u.arizona.edu/~pdavidso/amcog.html 8) Children with amnesia cast new light on memory and learning?, http://www.psy.ohio-state.edu/psy312/amnesia2.htmlhttp://expressindia.com/ie/daily/19970720/20150363.html 9) About Traumatic Brain Injury, http://www.tbidoc.com/Appel12.html