Abstract
There have been various approaches to the classification of brain damage resulting from a non-missile head injury. One is that being used in this Symposium, namely primary and secondary. Primary damage occurs at the moment of injury and consists mainly of contusions and diffuse axonal injury, while secondary damage can be considered as a complication of the original injury and includes intracranial haematoma, brain damage secondary to raised intracranial pressure, shift and herniation of the brain, brain swelling, and hypoxic brain damage (Adams, Gennarelli, and Graham, 1982). Since it is now known as a result of early CT-scans and experimental studies (see below) that some types of so-called secondary brain damage, such as haematoma and swelling, may be present very soon after the injury, the distinction between primary and secondary damage is becoming somewhat blurred. There is therefore much to commend classifying brain damage resulting from a head injury as being focal or diffuse (Adams and Graham, 1984).
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© 1986 Plenum Press, New York
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Adams, J.H., Graham, D.I., Gennarelli, T.A. (1986). Primary Brain Damage in Non-Missile Head Injury. In: Baethmann, A., Go, K.G., Unterberg, A. (eds) Mechanisms of Secondary Brain Damage. NATO ASI Series, vol 115. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-5203-7_1
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