Hemorrhagic symptoms can be latent – sometimes taking weeks or even months to fully manifest. It’s for this reason that if you’ve been involved in an auto accident or some other traumatic event, that you see a doctor right away, even if you don’t notice any immediate symptoms.
A brain hemorrhage is a form of stroke that results from the bursting of an artery in the brain. This causes localized internal bleeding that damages brain cells, resulting in a myriad of mental and physical problems.
How Brain Hemorrhages Are Caused
When trauma is caused to the head, the brain tissues can become inflamed and swollen – a condition known as “cerebral edema”. Subsequently, blood can begin to pool and accumulate into a mass called a “hemotoma”. This pooling of blood can occur in various areas of the brain, including:
- Between the skull and the membranes surrounding the brain
- Within the membranes surrounding the brain
- Between the brain and its surrounding membranes
- Within the brain itself
The result of these two conditions is the building of pressure on the surrounding brain tissues, which cuts off blood flow and thus starves and destroys brain cells.
Symptoms of Brain Hemorrhages
There’s a wide variety of symptoms that manifest from brain hemorrhages, and these all depend on a number of factors, such as:
- The location of the trauma
- The severity of the trauma
- The extent of the bleeding
- The amount of affected tissue
And so on.
As stated above, the following symptoms can be latent. Other times, they can occur almost immediately, or slowly progress over time.
Symptoms include:
- A strange taste in the mouth, often bitter or metallic
- Tingling or numbness
- Loss of coordination and fine motor skills – this can appear as hand tremors, difficulty typing, or dialing a phone
- Difficulty swallowing or speaking
- Difficulting interpreting the speech of others
- Visual disturbances
- Weakness in the arms or legs
- Sudden seizures
- Severe headache
- Nausea and vomiting
- Loss of consciousness
Treatment
Your doctor will often determine the location of your brain hemorrhage based on your symptoms. He or she may also determine this through various tests such as an MRI or a CT scan. These tests can reveal the location of the hemorrhage and the amount and location of the blood that has accumulated. Your doctor may also perform an eye exam, which can reveal swelling in the optic nerve.
The nature of your treatment depends on the information gathered by your exam. In cases of minor hemorrhage, your doctor may simply prescribe various medications that will not only reduce swelling and convulsions, but also treat your pain. In more severe cases, surgery may be required in order to alleviate high amounts of swelling and internal bleeding.
Likelihood of Recovery
Your recovery is contingent on a number of factors – age, health, and lifestyle being some of the main ones. The severity of the hemorrhage is of course another factor, as well as the effectiveness of your doctors treatment.
Recovery from minor and moderate hemorrhage is often likely, while severe hemorrhages can result in complications such as stroke, permanent brain damage, and death.
If you have been involved in a traumatic incident and may be suffering from brain hemorrhage, see your doctor immediately for diagnosis and treatment.