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
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.
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