Primary and Secondary Brain Injury - Primary

Examples of primary and secondary brain injury in TBI
Primary Secondary
  • Intracerebral hemorrhage
  • Subdural hemorrhage
  • Subarachnoid hemorrhage
  • Epidural hemorrhage
  • Cerebral contusion
  • Cerebral laceration
  • Axonal stretch injury
  • Edema
  • Impaired metabolism
  • Altered cerebral blood flow
  • Free radical formation
  • Excitotoxicity

In TBI, primary injuries result immediately from the initial trauma. Primary injury occurs at the moment of trauma and includes contusion, damage to blood vessels, and axonal shearing, in which the axons of neurons are stretched and torn. The blood brain barrier and meninges may be damaged in the primary injury, and neurons may die. Cells are killed in a nonspecific manner in primary injury. Tissues have a deformation threshold: if they are deformed past this threshold they are injured. Different regions in the brain may be more sensitive to mechanical loading due to differences in their properties that result from differences in their makeup; for example, myelinated tissues may have different properties than other tissues. Thus some tissues may experience more force and be more injured in the primary injury. The primary injury leads to the secondary injury.

Read more about this topic:  Primary And Secondary Brain Injury

Famous quotes containing the word primary:

    “If the accumulated wealth of the past generations is thus tainted,—no matter how much of it is offered to us,—we must begin to consider if it were not the nobler part to renounce it, and to put ourselves in primary relations with the soil and nature, and abstaining from whatever is dishonest and unclean, to take each of us bravely his part, with his own hands, in the manual labor of the world.”
    —Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    “A fact is a proposition of which the verification by an appeal to the primary sources of our knowledge or to experience is direct and simple. A theory, on the other hand, if true, has all the characteristics of a fact except that its verification is possible only by indirect, remote, and difficult means.”
    —Chauncey Wright (1830–1875)

    “Parental attitudes have greater correlation with pupil achievement than material home circumstances or variations in school and classroom organization, instructional materials, and particular teaching practices.”
    —Children and Their Primary Schools, vol. 1, ch. 3, Central Advisory Council for Education, London (1967)