samsmith2424 wrote:Thanks Stacey. It is difficult for me to know how much variation in practice there is in dealing with such injuries. I would be interested in CK's opinion.
As you can imagine, it would be unprofessional and inappropriate for anyone of us who can only read comments to dispute or say much about the results of a professional who has actually examined the person and who carries the professional and medical responsibility for his/her opinions.
I have a complete syllabus on judo neurotraumatology, which was a separate module in one of the programs I did and which is entirely devoted to these kind of problems, but unfortunately I am not the author of it, it is not in the public domain, and therefore I am not allowed to attach that here for your consultation due to copyright protection.
There have been numerous incidents of people in sports with head injuries, being evaluated by standard medical personnel such as nurses or GPs, where people were subsequently transported to hospital or simply told to go home, where the outcome in the end was fatal. The 2009 incident involving movie actress Natasha Richards was a typical case of this. See inter alia:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2009/mar/19/natasha-richardson-dies-skiing-accident
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natasha_Richardson
I have also explained such injuries many times before on this forum. I have specifically said that it is totally wrong for people to think that only hitting something hard with your head causes major injuries and that it is actually the acceleration of your head, and the differences in acceleration between the different structures in your head that produce shearing forces, even when wearing a helmet or hitting tatami.
Many, if not most of the fatalities in judo are due to similar causes. A quick look into the numerous children's judo-related deaths in Japan provided additional documentary evidence for this, and the
Judo Accident Victims Association website might be a good resource to look at:
http://judojiko.net/eng/
To get back to your question, and taking into account what I just wrote ... this is why experts in this matter in their courses continuously hammer on the fact that anyone known to have sustained such an injury should not just be evaluated by nurses, or GP's, nor be transported just to "a hospital", but SHOULD BE EVALUATED BY A PHYSICIAN QUALIFIED IN NEUROTRAUMATOLOGY AND BE TRANSPORTED TO A HOSPITAL THAT HAS NEUROSURGERY DEPARTMENT.
Even if such a person would be in a standard hospital, then in the case of epidural or subdural hematoma, the outcome is still often fatal. When hematoma occur in the brain they can only move the brain inwards hence causing pressure on areas that may be critical for survival such as breathing center. Even removing part of the skull to release part of that pressure may not be enough. It is a very, very serious issue in which one cannot be careful enough, which the many reports of sports-related fatalities illustrate.
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