Head Injuries and Treatment

Video 23 of 36
3 min 12 sec
English
English
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If you hit your head, this can cause a lot of problems because it might be that you have just got a cut on the head that we can deal with as a normal cut. It might be there's just a bruise on the skin on the outside of the skull. Where head injuries become a problem is the brain itself. It may well be you bruise the brain or there's cuts in the brain. Because the brain is in a shell of bone it can't expand. If there's any swelling or any blood flow that's coming out of the cut, it's going to apply pressure on the brain, and the more pressure that's applied on the brain, this can then give different signs and symptoms. Head injuries can be very, very serious and they can affect people in different ways. It may be they feel sick. It may be they're actually sick. Dizziness can be extreme or mild. They can have problems with how they feel, their thirst. They can also have some other signs you can see. These could be blood or a straw colored fluid coming out of the ears or the nose. If this is happening, this is an indication of a very serious head injury.

As far as first aid is concerned with head injuries, it's quite straightforward really. If someone's fallen over and then hit the back of their head and this person is feeling very dizzy, feeling very sick, and maybe they've got a lot of pain, headaches, things like this, what we need to do is try and rest them the best we can. We do this with the head and shoulders raised.

By doing this, we're taking as much pressure off of them as possible. And also, this will help control their balance a little bit better. You need to talk to the person to find out what's happened. And the important thing here with head injuries can be the person's hit their head now, the bleed is starting or the bruise is starting, getting worse, it may well be that a number of hours later, this person has a problem, so they should not really be left alone.

Head injuries generally would need to be seen by the emergency services. And then what'll normally happen is they will give them a sheet and information about when they go home. It's just to make sure that they're not going to slip into a coma or have other problems later on. So to summarise, someone's fallen and hit their head, we need to set them up with the head and shoulders raised, we may need to just keep them warm, keep then comfortable. We need to make sure the emergency service has been activated, but also after the event, anything up to 24, even 48 hours later, keep monitoring the person and just look at them. Are there changes in personality? Differences in their eyes? Or are they suffering from extreme headaches? If you're seeing these sorts of things, you must get to the emergency help straight away.