HEAD INJURY IN CHILDREN
Most head injuries in children recover over a short time. But if your child has a bad head injury and shows any of the following symptoms do seek medical urgent medication attention as soon as possible.
These are:
- Unconsciousness, or lack of full consciousness(for example, problems keeping eyes open).
- Any confusion (not knowing where they are, getting things muddled up).
- Any drowsiness(feeling sleepy) that goes on for longer than 1 hour when they would normally be wide awake
- Difficulty waking them up
- Any problems understanding or speaking
- Any loss of balance or problems walking
- Any weakness in one or more arms or legs
- Any problems with their eyesight
- Very painful headache that won’t go away
- Vomitting-being sick more than three times
- Any fits(collapsing or passing out suddenly)
- Clear fluids coming out from their nose or ear.
- New bleeding from one or both ears
- New deafness in one or both ears
Things You shouldn’t worry about:
They may feel some other symptoms over the next few days, which should disappear in the next 2 weeks. These include a mild headache, feeling sick(without vomiting ), dizziness, iritability or bad temper, problems concentrating or problems with their memory, tiredness, lack of appepite or problems sleeping. If you feel very concerned about any of these symptoms in the first few days after dischrge, you should take the patient back to the Emergency Department. If the problems do not go away after 2 weeks, you should take the patient to see their doctor.
THINGS THAT WILL HELP A CHILD GET BETTER
If the parent of the child follows this advice, it should help the child get better more quickly and it may help any symptoms they have to go away.
- Do have plenty of rest and avoid stressful situations
- Do not play any contact sport(for example, football) for at least 3 weeks without talking to their doctor first if the head injury was serious.
THINGS YOU SHOULD DO TO MAKE SURE THE CHILD IS OK
- Do not allow them to return to school until you feel they have completely recovered
- Do not leave the patient alone in the home for the first 48 hours after leaving the hospital
- Do make sure that there is a nearby telephone
LONG-TERM PROBLEMS
Most children recover quickly from their accident and experiece no long-term problems. However, some patients only develop problems after a few weeks or months.
If you start to feel that things are not quite right for your child(for example, memory problems, not feeling quite their usual self), then please contact their doctor as soon as possible so that he/she can make patient is recovering properly.