What are the symptoms of brain concussion

Concussions are not uncommon in life, especially if you accidentally hit your head. It is very likely to cause a concussion. If the situation is serious, it may even cause death. Generally, patients will show common symptoms such as dizziness, headache, nausea, vomiting, tinnitus, or insomnia. Therefore, you should pay attention to check when some collisions or accidents occur.

1. Transient brainstem symptoms

Consciousness impairment occurs immediately after trauma to the head, manifested as confusion or complete coma, lasting for several seconds, minutes or tens of minutes, but generally not more than half an hour. The patient may also experience symptoms such as pale complexion, sweating, decreased blood pressure, slow heartbeat, shallow and slow breathing, decreased muscle tone, and slow or absent various physiological reflexes. In most patients with reversible mild concussion, the central nervous system function recovers rapidly from bottom to top, from the cervical spinal cord-medulla oblongata-brainstem to the cerebral cortex; while in irreversible severe concussion, it may be a top-down inhibition process, which interrupts the function of the medullary respiratory center and circulatory center for too long, thus leading to death.

2. Retrograde amnesia (recent amnesia)

After the patient regains consciousness, he cannot recall the situation at the time of injury or even a period of time before the injury. The more severe the concussion and the longer the primary coma, the more obvious the phenomenon of amnesia for recent events, but he can recall past events (distant memory). This may be related to damage to the hippocampus.

3. Concussion recovery period

Patients often have symptoms such as dizziness, headache, nausea, vomiting, tinnitus, insomnia, etc., which usually disappear gradually within weeks to months. However, some patients have long-term dizziness, headache, insomnia, irritability, inattention and memory loss. Some of them are recovery symptoms. If there is no obvious improvement after 3 to 6 months, in addition to considering whether there are mental factors, detailed examination and analysis should be carried out to see if there is any delayed damage. Do not simply use the term "sequelae of concussion", which will increase the patient's mental burden.