What Is Traumatic Brain Injury?

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) typically occurs when one suffers a severe head injury. There are two types of TBI: primary and secondary. Primary brain injuries are sudden and severe injuries to the brain that are more or less complete at the time of impact. Primary brain injuries can occur during or immediately after a blow to the head, fall, explosion, car accident, gunshot wound, or other incident.

But tragically, TBI patients typically die from secondary — not primary — brain injuries. Secondary brain injuries are the changes that evolve over a period of hours or days after the primary brain injury, including a host of cellular, chemical, tissue, or blood vessel changes in the brain that contribute to further brain tissue deterioration. Since the primary injury can’t be undone, TBI management focuses on preventing secondary injuries.¹

Managing TBI Patients with the ZOLL TBI Dashboard

ZOLL’s TBI Dashboard provides clinical decision support for managing traumatic brain injury patients, allowing EMS, military caregivers, and other medical professionals to see at a glance all the important information they need to better manage TBI patients and help prevent secondary brain injuries. TBI Dashboard clearly displays crucial data in one place, so clinicians can make treatment decisions before a patient’s status becomes critical.

TBI Dashboard provides a comprehensive display of the most relevant physiologic data for monitoring hypotension, hypoxia, and hyperventilation, which must be avoided to help prevent secondary brain injury.

With TBI Dashboard clinicians can view:

• Continuously updated data, providing trending information on all relevant vital signs at a glance
• Breath-by-breath countdown timer to help maintain proper ventilation rates
• Target values for SpO₂, NIBP, and CO₂ to remind medics of existing protocols

_{¹Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI): Incidence and Distribution, 2004.}