Written by admin on 2009-03-11T13:07:59+0000">March 11, 2009 – 1:07 pm
Concussion is a severe, non-specific upset in the functioning of the brain following a blow; to cause concussion, the blow usually has to be severe enough to knock the patient out.
The brain is soft and delicate, and needs protecting from direct blows by the solid walls of the skull, which completely enclose it. liven though these bones are quite thin, they protect the brain very effectively from all but the heaviest blows. The part of the skull which surrounds the brain is shaped like the shell of an egg -thin, but amazingly strong. Like the egg, the skull derives its strength from its smooth, ovoid shape, which distributes the force of incoming blows in such a way as to disperse their energy evenly. There are very few discontinuities, which act as weak points where stress might build up, so it usually takes a very hard blow to crack the skull and an even harder blow to stove it in.
Although the brain is well protected against direct injury, no amount of external protection can ever prevent the disruption that occurs from a twisting, rotating force suddenly applied to the head – such as a sideways punch to the jaw. When this occurs, the skull spins round rapidly, but the brain doesn’t follow quite so fast, being semi-solid (rather like blancmange). In just the same way that you can split a plate of blancmange by suddenly twisting it, so the shearing forces from a blow pull and stretch the nerve fibres as they travel across the brain. In minor cases, this stretching merely causes a temporary disruption of brain activity (being ‘knocked out’, or made unconscious). In more severe cases there is permanent brain damage, as the fibres are stretched until they snap, or small blood vessels rupture and bleed.
It doesn’t need a single, severe injury to cause brain damage. Repeated blows can have the same effect, even if they’re not strong enough to knock you out. The ‘punch-drunk’ fighter is a classic example – a boxer who over the years has sustained many blows to his head. As a result of these frequent minor injuries his brain functions slowly deteriorate, his IQ drops, his speech is slurred and his movements are uncoordinated.
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