"Celebral Contusions, Lacerations and Hematomas": 3 (Advances in Neurotraumatology) - Tapa blanda

Posttraumatic cerebral contusions, lacerations and hematomas in the past could often only be suspected by clinical symptomatology and be visualized by angiography in a restricted manner, but they are now diag­ nosed with precision through CT and MRI; they remain in the limelight in our daily management of severe head injuries. Stalhammar's longlasting research in biomechanics is he re condensed in a concise review of the current knowledge in this field, thus providing the basis for our understanding of the parenchymal cerebral posttraumatic lesions. The neuropathological investigations and findings remain fundamental to the clinical features, and in this text there is the advantage that they were carried out and interpreted by a very experienced neurasurgeon, Ion Oprescu, who most regretfully died before the completion of this volume. The special morphological and clinical investigations by Nakamura, concerning diffuse brain injury, contribute to our necessary diagnosis and treatment of this phenomenon where, without grass visible lesions of cerebral tissue, a high mortality occurs. The clinical features, the princip1es of therapy and the outcome are described by Vigouroux and Guillermain, whose clinical study clearly demonstrates the limitations of all our efforts in severe brain injuries, in spite of decades of clinical experience and research.

The book series Advances in Neurotraumatology, edited by the Neurotraumatology Committee of the World Federation of Neurosurgical Societies, described in the preceding Volume I the traumatic extracerebral collections and in Volume II the cervico-spinal injuries. Volume III deals in depth with the biomechanical, neuropathological and clinical pictures of traumatic lesions of the brain tissue itself, the most frequent consequences of severe head injuries. Experts in the field discuss the new results of their own clinical investigations, neuroimaging and electrophysiology on the interpretation of diffuse and focal dynamic development of supra- and infratentorial cerebral contusions, lacerations and hematomas. Above all they consider the important consequences of these aspects for individual treatment and prognosis. For practical purposes the detailed discussions of each clinical chapter are summarized in instructions for the daily practice.