Cause Of Head Trauma In Children And Adults Worldwide

Head trauma remains one of the most frequent causes of death and disability in children and adults Worldwide.[1, 2] They results in lesions or functional damage of the scalp, the cranial bones, the meninges and the brain itself. [1, 2] According to tThe Centre for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention, National Centre for Injury Prevention and Control, Atlanta, Georgia, USA report in 2010, The 2010 report of the Centre for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention, National Centre for Injury Prevention and Control, USA, documented that an estimated 1.7 million people receives medical treatment for head trauma every year in the United States alone with subsequent high morbidity and mortality recorded.[3] Head injury from traumatic events is documented

[9] In the World Health Organization (WHO) Geneva 2006 report, it was projected that by the year 2020, head trauma from RTAs alone will be the third leading burden of diseases in the developing countries. Head injury poses a tremendous health challenge with attendant huge socio-economic impact from the head trauma itself or its squealae largely due to poverty and scanty infrastructures in most African countries .[10] In Nigeria, like other countries in the sub-region, the advent of commercial motorcycles popularly

Primary head injury is present at the time of the trauma and is seen as a transient or an irreversible damage to the brain but secondary brain injury is usually as a result of accompanying peri-lesional oedema or raised intracranial pressure or parenchymal ischemia affecting varying parts of the brain. These secondary changes can cause tonsillar herniation especially in cases with raised intracranial pressure and may eventually culminate in the death of the patient. [14-15]

The current trend of evaluation of patients with head injury includes Computed tomography (CT), Magnetic resonance Imaging (MRI) and Nuclear medicine. However, cranial CT has emerged the mainstay in the diagnostic work-up of patients with head injury, particularly in the initial assessment of the head injured due to its availability, short image acquisition time and its accuracy in the detection of skull fractures and intracranial haemorrhage. [15 –