What Are the Common Symptoms of a Concussion?

If you suffer from cerebral concussion, the most obvious symptom in the early stage of the illness is transient coma. After waking up, you may also experience symptoms such as dizziness and vomiting. In severe cases, it can also cause severe brain damage. Therefore, everyone must take this illness seriously. So, what are the common symptoms of cerebral concussion?

1. Temporary brainstem symptoms: Immediately after a head injury, consciousness disturbance occurs, manifesting as unconsciousness or complete coma lasting for a few seconds, minutes, or tens of minutes, but generally not exceeding half an hour. Patients may simultaneously experience paleness, sweating, decreased blood pressure, bradycardia, shallow and slow breathing, decreased muscle tone, and迟钝 or disappearance of various physiological reflexes. In most reversible cases of mild cerebral concussion, central nervous function rapidly recovers from the lower levels (cervical spinal cord - medulla oblongata - brainstem) to the cerebral cortex; in irreversible severe cerebral concussion, it may be a top-down inhibition process, causing prolonged interruption of the functions of the respiratory center and circulatory center in the medulla oblongata, leading to death.

2. Symptoms during the recovery phase of concussion: Patients often experience symptoms such as dizziness, headache, nausea, vomiting, tinnitus, and insomnia, which generally gradually disappear within weeks to months. However, some patients experience long-term symptoms such as dizziness, headache, insomnia, irritability, inattention, and memory impairment, some of which belong to recovery phase symptoms.

Examination results may show:

1. No fractures are visible on skull X-rays; lumbar puncture pressure is within the normal range, and there are no red blood cells in cerebrospinal fluid; electroencephalograms only show low-to-high amplitude fast waves with occasional diffuse δ waves and θ waves, which recover within 1 to 2 days, or a few patients have scattered slow waves that return to normal within 1 to 2 weeks.

2. Auditory brainstem evoked potentials may show prolonged I-V interpeak intervals, prolonged V wave latency, or decreased amplitude or waveform disappearance.

3. CT scans, both plain and enhanced, should be negative. However, clinically, it has been found that a few patients have negative initial CT scans but develop delayed intracranial secondary lesions during continuous dynamic observation, which should be noted. Some scholars have reported the use of radionuclides 131I-IMp and 99mTc-HM-pAO for single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) to examine adolescent patients with cerebral concussion and found that 70% had reduced blood flow in the cerebellum and occipital lobe.

Through the above introduction, everyone should now know the symptoms of cerebral concussion. In our lives, everyone must protect themselves, especially their heads, and never allow the head to be hit, as this can cause cerebral concussion, which not only harms oneself but also burdens the family.