Types of Brain Hemorrhage

In our last post (part one) we introduced the subject of head injuries with an overview of trauma patterns typically found in head injury patients. Today let’s talk about bleeding inside the skull or intracranial hemorrhage. Brain hemorrhage occurs when blood vessels inside the skull rupture. There are some non-traumatic causes as well. Ruptured aneurysms and hemorrhagic strokes would be a few examples of non-traumatic intracranial hemorrhages. We classify bleeding in the skull by location, using the layers of the meninges as a guide. You may recall from EMT class that the meninges are fluid coated membranes that surround and protect the brain and spinal cord. They also encapsulate and limit the ways that blood can move inside the skull. How the brain bleeds is entirely dependant on which meningeal layers capture and contain the blood. Do you remember those meningeal layers? Lets do a quick review in case you’ve forgotten, courtesy of our friends at ADAM education. On the outermost layer we have the dura mater, a tough, fibrous outer covering. Beneath that is the web like arachnoid layer and, adhering to the surface of the brain itself, is the thin pia mater. Each of these layers will contain and guide intracranial bleeding to some degree. Therefore, we classify these hemorrhages as epidural (above the dura mater), subdural (below the dura, within the arachnoid layer), subarachnoid (bleeding into the cerebrospinal fluid) and cerebral hemorrha...
Source: The EMT Spot - Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Tags: EMT Source Type: blogs