Brain damage

Brain damage or brain damage is a collective term for various functional disorders of the brain . On the one hand, brain damage is assessed according to whether the entire brain or only certain regions are affected. On the other hand, they are classified according to their causes (such as internal and external) and according to the criterion of whether they are permanent functional disorders or whether they are reversible .

Damage that has occurred directly in the brain (such as through the effects of violence or space-occupying tumors or infarcts ) is referred to as primary and differentiated from secondary brain damage as the effects of further functional disorders. The primary brain damage is divided into focal and diffuse according to its location.

External causes include tissue damage from lesions . Cerebral haemorrhages can also be triggered by mechanical action. All of this is summarized under the term traumatic brain injury .

Internal causes include disorders of the blood supply to the brain ( ischemia ), which lead to a lack of oxygen ( hypoxia ) and can be caused by a stroke , heart attack or cardiovascular arrest . Drowning or suffocating also lead to "hypoxic brain damage". Pathological changes in the brain can also be caused by inflammatory brain diseases such as meningitis ( meningitis ), inflammation of the brain ( encephalitis ), poisoning or a brain tumor .

Of encephalopathy , which usually affects the whole brain, is when the self-regulation of the processes is disrupted in the brain, for example, when the neurotransmitters do not perform their function.

In pediatrics, brain damage that leads to movement disorders is summarized under the term early childhood brain damage .

literature

Angelika Thöne-Otto, Hans J. Markowitsch: Memory disorders after brain damage, Hogrefe, Göttingen 2004. ISBN 3-8017-1665-1

Web links

Wiktionary: brain damage - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

↑ Peter P. Urban (ed.): Diseases of the brain stem, Schattauer, Stuttgart 2009, p. 162. ISBN 978-3-7945-2478-5
↑ H. van Aken et al .: Intensive Care Medicine , 2nd edition, Thieme, Stuttgart 2007, p. 1086. ISBN 978-3-13-114872-8
^ Roche Lexicon Medicine . 5th edition. Urban & Fischer, Munich and Jena 2003, ISBN 3-437-15156-8 , pp. 835 ( limited preview in Google Book search).

[1] Peter P. Urban (ed.): Diseases of the brain stem, Schattauer, Stuttgart 2009, p. 162. ISBN 978-3-7945-2478-5

[2] H. van Aken et al .: Intensive Care Medicine , 2nd edition, Thieme, Stuttgart 2007, p. 1086. ISBN 978-3-13-114872-8

[Roche_Lexikon-3] Roche Lexicon Medicine . 5th edition. Urban & Fischer, Munich and Jena 2003, ISBN 3-437-15156-8 , pp. 835 ( limited preview in Google Book search).