IMAGES IN EMERGENCY MEDICINE
Tension pneumocephalus following head injury
Department of Neurosurgery, Royal London Hospital, London, UK
Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr S Vasani
17 Eagle Wharf Court, London SE1 2LZ; dr_s_vasani@hotmail.com
Accepted 22 June 2005
Keywords: head injury; tension pneumocephalus; cardiac arrest
| The first 100% of the full text of this article appears below. |
A 54 year old man sustained a head injury in a road traffic accident. He complained of headache and vomiting, and he had cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) rhinorrhoea. Computed tomography (CT) showed intracranial air with basal skull fractures. Two days later his conscious level rapidly deteriorated. An emergency CT scan showed an increase in the size of the pneumocephalus. He had a cardiac arrest, which was refractory to standard treatment1 but responded to emergency twist-drill release of the tension pneumocephalus. This was followed by cessation of CSF rhinorrhoea and the patient recovered fully.
Simple pneumocephalus is common after head injury and usually does not require surgical treatment. Post-traumatic tension pneumocephalus proceeding to rapid deterioration and fatality is rare. Treatment involves urgent release of intracranial tension, and leads to dramatic improvement.
[in a new window] Figure 1 Pneumocephalus.
| |||||||||
Competing interests: none declared
- Thiagarajah S, Frost EA, Singh T, et al. Cardiac arrest associated with tension pneumocephalus. Anesthesiology 1982;56:73–5.[Medline]
CiteULike 
Complore 
Connotea 
Del.icio.us 
Digg 
Reddit 
Technorati What's this?
- Full Text
- Full Text (PDF)
- Submit a response
- Alert me when this article is cited
- Alert me when eLetters are posted
- Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
- Email this link to a friend
- Similar articles in this journal
- Similar articles in PubMed
- Add article to my folders
- Download to citation manager
- Request Permissions
Citing Articles
Google Scholar
PubMed
Topic Collections
Bookmark with
Register for free content
The full back archive is now available for all BMJ Journals. Institutional subscribers may access the entire archive as part of their subscription. Personal subscribers will also have access to all content when logged in. Non-subscribers who register have free access to all articles published before 2006 right back to volume 1 issue 1. Register here to access the free archive of all BMJ Journals.
Don't forget to sign up for content alerts so you keep up to date with all the articles as they are published.
