Scary Stats!

A head injury is any shaking or trauma to the region of the neck and or  head.  Whiplash means your brain has been violently tossed back and forth in your head.  (Shaken Baby Syndrome is similar in nature) The inside of the skull is rough and porous.  Arteries do rupture.  When they rupture oxygen to the part of the brain the artery once fed, stops.  That part of the brain can be affected after 4 short minutes.  It can even die completely.  Doctors now believe that brain injury may not show up on MRI tests as they can only scan down to millimeters and brain damage may occur at the molecular level.  Assaults, heading a soccer ball, a broken nose and a skull fracture are vectors for brain injury.  The present rule of thumb many hospitals remains the same, unless it is absolutely obvious then we don’t consider nor do we have a classification for brain injury.  In B.C., when you arrive at a hospital for a broken nose or a skull fracture, it is classified as that, a broken nose and or a skull fracture.

         No one has put 2 and 2 together to get 5 and that is the problem  They know 2 and 2 is 4 and so that is all they go on.  Whiplash is a trauma to the neck and therefore that’s where the treatment is focused on.  They cannot work out of the box and ask the basic question that if the soft tissue of the neck can be damaged then wouldn’t it go to say that the soft tissue in the skull called, for the lack of a better word, the brain, also end up injured?  Just this year a man who was beaten severely about the head entered a Vancouver Hospital, was thought to be drunk and released.  His wife found him wondering around the streets and took him to the hospital where he was then admitted and part of his brain was removed. 

Here are some basic statistics that might floor you. 

Courtesy of  Brain Injury Associations of B.C.

http://www.biabc.org/

	Brain Injury is the #1 killer and disabler of people under 45.
	14,000 British Columbians acquire new Brain Injuries each year.
	160,000 British Columbians live with the devastating impacts of Brain Injuries at any time.
	Motor vehicle accidents account for the overwhelming majority of deaths and disability by unintentional injury.
	Research indicates that as many as 9 out of 10 unintentional injuries can be prevented.
	The cost to society is immense. Brain Injury alone costs Canadians more than $1 billion per year.