Traumatic Injury for Gamers

Head Injuries SCALP Scalp wounds bleed copiously, making it a major source of haemorrhage and shock. They may also be incidental to damage to the skull. SKULL Skull fractures in different places have rather different effects, but for these purposes, symptoms include one or more of the following; a mixture of blood and cerebrospinal fluid leaking from the ears, nose, or throat, blood in the whites of the eyes, loss of the sense of smell, loss of vision in one eye, a dilated, fixed pupil, a worsening in the patients level of consciousness. These last symptoms are indicative of pressure on the brain, caused either by swelling of the brain or bleeding into the skull. Swelling of the brain can cause serious damage or possibly death on its own, but has the advantage that its self-limiting (and in a modern setting, usually controllable with drugs). On the other hand, haemorrhage will almost always lead to continued degradation and death if left untreated. The patient may have a headache localised at the injury. He may be lucid for a period after the injury, but this will rarely be a period of normalcy. He will usually feel drowsy, and may thereafter slip into a coma. The patient will lose one set of reflexes after another. He may gradually lose the use of one of his arms or legs, or become completely paralysed on one side of the body. This will happen gradually as pressure increases starting with a slurring of speech and clumsiness. His breathing may become uneven, and some part or all of his body may begin shaking uncontrollably (seizure activity.) The time course for these degradations can be hours or days and the condition can worsen dramatically in minutes. JAW A broken jaw is associated with numbness, bleeding from tooth sockets, fractured or missing teeth, inability to close the jaw properly (teeth don't come together right), pain on moving the jaw, and sometimes with bleeding from the ear. Fractures of the jaw also allow the tongue and other soft tissues to intrude into the airway, leading to suffocation. FACE All sort of bones can be broken in the face: the face plate, sinuses, cheekbones, the orbits of the eye, and of course, the nose. There are a wide variety of possible symptoms, but severe facial injury usually results in progressive swelling, resulting in difficulty breathing, inhalation of blood, frequently eventually (~1 hour) completely closing off the airways, resulting in suffocation. There may also be numbness or paralysis in some part of the face. Facial injuries can also lead to extreme haemorrhage and shock.

Neck Injuries... Back... Page 4 of 9 Copyright © 1999 James West