Traumatic brain injury Flashcards
Define Acquired brain injury
Injury that is not congenital, hereditary, degenerative or caused by trauma - event that occurs after birth.
There are 2 types:
1) traumatic: falls, assaults, accidents, sports injuries.
2) non-traumatic: stroke, aneurysms, tumour, infectious disease.
How do falls impact people of different ages differently?
People over 75 are 3x more likely to be hospitalised.
What are the different types of changes following ABI
1) Physical/somatic: headache, balance disturbance, motor/movement disorders, fatigue and sensory chanages.
2) Cognitive: decreased attention/concentration, poor memory, executive dysfunction, subtle language difficulties (naming and word-finding problems).
3) Emotional/behavioural: anxiety, depression, irritability, agitation, aggression.
What is executive function and how is it altered after brain injury?
Executive function:
* Thinking skills we use for:
* Problem solving
* Making decisions
* Planning and completing tasks
* Reflection
* Dysfunction symptoms:
* Loss of motivation
* Disorganised
* Loss of adaptation
* Problem solving is compromised
* Increased impulsivity
* Lack of planning
Decreased after brain injury
Define traumatic brain injury
an alteration in brain function (loss of
consciousness, post-traumatic amnesia, and
neurologic deficits) or other evidence of brain
pathology (visual, neuroradiologic, or laboratory
confirmation of damage to the brain) caused by
external force”
Outline link between TBI and AD
History of TI =2.3x more likely to develop AD.
Patients with TBI and AD have similarities. TBI is risk factor for dementia.
Also accelerates onset of cognitive impairment (true for non-dementia cases too).
How many people die or are hospitalised due to TBI every year?
- Causes death or hospitalization of an estimated 27-69 million people each year
(James et al., 2019) - Affects more than 1.7 million Americans, costing $76.5 billion
Link between TBI and cardiovascular disease
US veterans with TBI history more likely to develop cardiovascular disease.
Link between TBI and motor function
30% of TBI survivors report motor deficits.
Outline classification of TBI
- Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS)
measures the level of
consciousness: - Mild (GCS 13-15)
- Moderate (GCS 9-12)
- Severe (GCS ≤ 8)
- Reflects the risk of dying from
TBI: - High (up to 40%) for severe
Outline the primary injury phase
May be:
* focal (e.g. subdural - blood collects between skull and brain surface, contusion - collection of blood outside vessel)
* Causes irreversible damage due to impairment of cells or cell death
Shockwave of brain compression and expansion causes mechanical forces in skill that damages neurons and blood vessels.
Diffuse injury
widely distributed axonal damage, vascular injury and hypoxic-ischemic.
main mechanism for diffuse is acceleration/deceleration of the head seen in car accidents.
Brain tissue is heterogenous = some parts of brain move slower than others causing sheer, tensile and compressive forces within brain tissue.
traumatic axonal injury, diffuse cerebral oedema.
Lateral head movement results in more severe damage than saggital.
What is TAI? give pathological hallmark
Traumatic axonal injury: grossly swollen axons.
Trauma evokes cascade of changes to axon which ultimately leads to secondary disconnection.
Altered focal axolemma permeabilitily, ionic homeostasis causes ca influx and mito to swell. Cytochrome c released from mito, this and ca levels results in cysteine proteins to breakdown essential axonal cytoskeleton. Anterograde transport converts to retrograde to prevent axonal swelling.
Calcineurin activated which alters microtubule network and disrupts axonal transport, organelles accumulate and there is swelling.
Andriessen et al., 2010
Outline focal TBI
Impact to head causes energy transfer to cerebral tissues and causes depolarisation.
Increase in extracellular glu = supraphysiological CA2+ influx x50 normal that initiates parallel operating intracellular cascades. (also increased Na)
Inncreased activity of ca-depdendent enzymes nNOS enhances nitric oxide production = lipid peroxidation and necrosis.
Cysteine proteases augmented and causes necrosis.
mitochondrial sequesters excess ca but as so high this ca overload leads to increased mito permeability, ROS released into the cell and apoptosis triggered.
Necrosis is ATP independent therefore occurs in tissue where mito not functioning.
Andriessen et al., 2010
Inflammation
Inflamm: BBB dys allows infiltration of neutrophils, lymphocytes in,
- upregulation of cytokines such as tnf-alpha which acticates caspases used in cell death.
ng and lee 2019