The consequences
of Acute Brain Damage
Stroke, sudden cardiac death and traumatic brain injury
ABD may lead to the loss of the ability to speak. move, to interact with others or even to breathe. In fact, it takes just 8 minutes for a portion of the brain to be irreversibly impaired by the trauma.
ABD leads to an expenditure of $335.5 billion globally
41% is spent the US and 26% in Europe, representing 5.2% of the total health care costs
It’s management is one of greatest challenges of modern Emergency Medicine because of the scope of the consequences both on the short term and on the medium/long term, with a significant impact on clinical, social and economic factors.
On site early treatment has been
recognized as extremely critical
To preserve the health of the patient and to reduce the development of lesions, moreover it has proven to significantly reduce the extent and severity of brain damage
Current treatment of ABD relies on hypothermia and sedation to reduce the metabolism of neurons and contain secondary brain damage, responsible of the expansion of neural lesions. While therapeutic hypothermia for ABD is relatively new, sedation is a mainstay therapy for this pathology; both approaches however suffer from significant limitations.