Okay so I just whacked the back of my head on the underside of a bunk bed and then started to think about concussion.
I’ve heard horror stories of people banging their head, going to sleep and never waking up again.
What would doctors do? Do they just not let you sleep?
In: Biology
You can’t cure concussion. It gets better by itself, slowly. We don’t stop people sleeping, that’s a myth. If it’s bad we will do regular neurological tests which might involve periodically waking you up.
It’s not that sleeping is bad for people who are concussed. Sleeping is actually very good for people who are *recovering* from concussions. It’s that *immediately* *following* a head injury, you need to know whether the person is able to keep themselves conscious or not. Letting that person take a nap masks signs and symptoms that might be indicative of a more serious condition, like a brain bleed, which can be fatal.
If a person has had a serious head injury, they should be taken for emergent medical evaluation. Doctors will likely ask the person about their symptoms, perform a neurological exam, and may order brain imaging to check for bleeding. If diagnosed with a concussion and cleared of any more serious conditions, the person will probably be sent home to rest and recover.
As others have said, it is not dangerous to go to sleep. However, becoming unconscious, and not being able to be aroused, could be a sign of a more serious brain injury. In that case, imaging the brain with a CT scanner can rule out bleeding in the brain. The horror stories you have heard about would be people dying from bleeding, not concussions. There is no cure for a concussion. For people who have more serious concussions, neurologists or psychiatrist/psychologists can provide therapy long term to cope with and improve any cognitive deficits.
The concussion does not make it dangerous to go to sleep. Keeping you awake is not how the doctors would treat the concussion. I’m not a doctor so I don’t know all the things they might do to help somebody with a concussion, but it could be many things and in the worst cases, could involve surgery on the skull to relieve pressure.
The myth that going to sleep is dangerous comes from people’s **observations** that people who went to sleep after concussions died, but this is due to other factors:
1. If the concussion is so bad it causes the victim *to pass out*, it’s likely to be a bad enough concussion to kill them.
2. Sleeping after a severe injury *instead of going to the doctor* is wasting precious time when they should be getting medical treatment ASAP.
3. It’s harder to *tell how bad a concussion is* if somebody is asleep, which could lead to further delays of treatment, or make treatment harder once they are at a hospital.
Basically, going to sleep is not making the injury worse on its own, though an especially bad injury could cause somebody to “go to sleep” (lose consciousness), and if the injury isn’t taken seriously this could lead to a delay in treatment that could be fatal.
I was hospitalized for a concussion about thirty years ago. They kept me from sleeping and I remember the nurse telling me it was because I’d vomited due to the concussion and there’s a possibility of vomiting in your sleep, not waking up, and being suffocated by your own vomit.
We examine you, see what your symptoms are. If necessary, we consider imaging your brain by CT (or occasionally MRI). If you have mild to moderate symptoms, and we aren’t concerned about bleeding or increased intracranial pressure, then we send you home and we have no concerns about you going to sleep.
It’s important to note that if you hit your head, and the swelling is evident on the outside of the skull, that it is a good sign. Swelling INSIDE the skull is the killer here. I’m not saying that if the swelling is on the outside, that there’s not any on the inside, but if you know you hit your head hard, and it’s not turning into about an egg-sized lump you can cup in your palm, then there’s a need to get to the hospital quickly. Doctors will check you out, and monitor your vitals. When they can tell you are in stable condition, they then will allow you to go home and rest.
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