Traumatic Brain Injury

Head injuries fall into two categories: external (involving the scalp) and internal which may involve brain injury or lead to symptoms of brain injury. While head injuries sometimes appear to be minor, herein lies the risk. Symptoms of brain injury sometimes are not readily apparent for days, weeks or even longer. As such, some head injuries go undetected and untreated. While external head injuries may look minor and heal quickly symptoms of brain injury may ensue at a later date. With any type of head injury it is wise to immediately seek the assistance of a qualified physician to determine the extent of the damage, if any.

Symptoms of Brain Injury

Frontal Lobe Brain Injuries
Frontal lobe brain injuries may affect drive, mood, personality, judgment, interpersonal behavior, attention, foresight, and inhibition of improper conduct. The ability to schedule and execute those plans is known as "executive function." Frontal lobe injuries are often associated with injury to the olfactory bulbs beneath the frontal lobes. Injured Patients may also notice a diminished or changed sense of smell.

Temporal Lobe Brain Injury
A temporal lobe brain injury can lead to problems that are often permanent in nature. This type of traumatic brain injury can lead to problems such as difficulty recognizing faces, trouble understanding spoken words, and trouble identifying objects that are physically viewed. Other symptoms of these types of head injuries include short and long term memory loss.

Occipital Lobe Brain Injury
An Occipital Lobe Brain Injury is a traumatic brain injury that primarily affects a patient's vision. Common symptoms of such traumatic head injuries include problems identifying objects in the environment or identifying colors, problems discerning words and objects, writing and writing difficulty, hallucinations and sometimes blindness.

Parietal Lobe Brain Injury
A Parietal Lobe Brain Injury is a traumatic brain injury that can lead to problems with reading and recognition of objects. Additional symptoms of brain injury such as this include an inability to focus the on multiple objects simultaneously, problems with mathematics, and also an difficulty telling left from right.

Closed Head Injury
The negative effects from a closed head injury have varying degrees of severity. Less serious effects may result in a feeling of "confusion" or short term loss of consciousness; other symptoms include hazy vision or sometimes headaches. More severe symptoms of this type of head injury include longer term loss of consciousness or coma and sometimes seizure. Unfortunately, in some instances, the resulting damage due to a severe closed head injury is not unlike a stroke. In addition, the result of a closed head injury may be death.

Brain Stem Injury
A brain stem injury can cause respiratory or cardiac related death. A brain stem injury can also cause difficulties swallowing food, perceptual issues, and problems with motor skills such as balance and movement problems. In addition, symptoms of brain injury, such as dizziness, nausea, and sleeping difficulties are also not uncommon with a brain stem injury.

Pediatric Traumatic Brain Injury
Pediatric Traumatic Brain Injury survivors must often endure long term disability and must commonly depend on others for basic survival. Even the most basic living skills are difficult such as bathing, dressing, and walking for those who have suffered severe pediatric traumatic brain injury.  

General Information on Brain Injury
Not only does the patient of traumatic head injuries suffer with the symptoms caused by head injuries or traumatic brain injury, but the family feels the stress as well in dealing with the effects of traumatic brain injuries.

Symptoms of brain injury range from: lack of attention span, sleepiness, problems concentrating, lack of memory, poor judgment, feelings of depression, overly emotional behavior, problems sleeping, diminished sex drive, problems multi tasking and other factors. Attempting to sort out symptoms of brain injury due head injuries from otherwise problematic behavior is not an easy task.

Generally, symptoms of traumatic head injuries should decrease as time progresses as the brain experiences healing however sometimes symptoms appear to worsen as the patient has difficulty adapting to the brain injury.