Is a Patient With a Concussion Admitted to the Hospital?

Recently, I finished a book that included the following medical scenario. The main character fell into a river and suffered a broken arm and concussion. During her ER visit, the doctor tells her she needs to be admitted overnight for observation because of the concussion.

This is a common medical myth (along with the one that a CT scan is required in all instances of head injury-- it's not.)

A simple concussion does not need an overnight hospital stay. Let me qualify what I mean by simple. You receive a hit on the head and have one or some of the following global symptoms (dizziness, headache, nausea, vomiting, and amnesia to the events.) Global symptoms mean more than just the bump on your head hurts.

This is really how concussion is diagnosed. CT scan is reserved for concerns of bleeding and/or fracture that might require a neurosurgical intervention. Typically, symptoms associated with bleeding and fracture are persistent and more dramatic. Headache pain is not relieved with medication and/or worsens. There is more than one episode of vomiting. Persistent confusion. Perseverating-- saying the same thing over and over. Inability to move part of the body. Decreased responsiveness. Amnesia that doesn't improve.

A patient with a simple concussion is monitored in the ER for several hours. Typically, we'll give them medication based on their symptoms to see if they improve. For instance, a patient that has nausea, headache and dizziness will get an anti-nausea medication and an over-the-counter pain reliever like Tylenol or Ibuprofen. If their symptoms improve and/or resolve and they can hold something down to eat then they are discharged home with instructions on when to return to the ER.

In order to be admitted into the hospital the patient must exhibit severe, persistent symptomology and/or have bleeding and/or fracture.

In absence of these, the patient will be discharged home.

Head Injuries: Jason Joyner

There was that time when the editor saved the medical professional.

As a physician assistant, I enjoy having medical aspects in my story. But even medical folks can slip up and have errors in our fiction.

I have a scene where my heroine gets head trauma and wakes up later in the clutches of the villain. The freelance editor, Ben Wolf, wondered about that. He had read that if there was significant time of loss of consciousness (LOC), then it suggested a serious injury that would be hard for the victim to bounce right back from to be active.

One of my pet peeves is when characters are injured and recover too fast, so I had to look into this again.

Basically, my heroine suffered a concussion, also known as a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). Symptoms of a concussion can include headache, confusion, dizziness, visual changes, a blunted affect, and may or may not include LOC. (People always flash lights in pupils to check for concussion. If the pupils are affected, it is a serious sign and they won't be up and active soon.)

LOC usually is only for a few minutes, and as my editor noted, will mean a much more severe injury if it lasts for hours.

Blast. Foiled by the editor.

Except, you can use the amnesia angle.

A concussion with LOC may have retrograde (before the incident) or antegrade (after the incident) amnesia. According to one research article, the antegrade amnesia can last for a few hours after the incident. I can attest – I had a concussion in 5th grade and couldn’t remember a couple hours afterwards.

So if you need your protagonist to be out of it for a while, keep the actual LOC on the short side and use the amnesia angle to get you where you need to be. The victim may be incoherent, unsteady, with a blank expression during this time. Use these symptoms to add drama to the situation.

When your protagonist comes to, it is actually the end of antegrade amnesia. I remember with my concussion it was like I "woke up" after lunch during our quiet reading time at school. I was confused, unsure of what happened. I could remember part of the morning, but about two hours was blank. I even found a goose egg on my head later, but I didn't know how it got there.

So that was my work around. My heroine didn't have LOC the whole time. But there was enough injury to cause confusion and amnesia, keeping her from attempting escape. There you go Ben. A few minor tweaks, and all is well. Except for my heroine, who's tied up and threatened. But that's another story.

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Jason loves good stories and wants to use words to make a difference. When he's not writing, playing soccer, or losing in fantasy football, he works as a physician assistant in southeast Idaho. He also tries to keep up with his awesome wife, three high-energy boys, and his little princess. He writes suspense and YA supernatural, and likes to use his medical experience to punch up the stories. You can find him on Twitter @JasonCJoyner or his blog at www.jasoncjoyner.com/blog.

Dianna T. Benson: A Son's Tale of Traumatic Brain Injury

The term concussion is well known. The medical field refers to a concussion as a TBI – Traumatic Brain Injury. Contact sports are one of the top causes of a TBI, another are MVCs – Motor Vehicle Collisions.

My teenaged son has endured four concussions. The first two as a goalie for the Junior Hurricanes and the third in a MVC. The first one took him out of school for a month and hockey for three months. The second, a year later, was more mild, which is unusual. Typically, a patient suffers a more severe TBI the second time. In the MVC, a classmate was driving them to school when another car struck them. This third TBI ended my son’s hockey career, preventing him from attending the Junior Hockey draft in Canada Spring of 2013.

The problem wasn’t simply that this was his third concussion, although that in itself is a strong reason to end a contact sport career. With this third TBI, a neurologist evaluated him versus just the concussion clinic MDs who’d treated him with the first two. Not only was it his third TBI, but his symptoms were extremely severe, which didn’t make sense to me – the details of the MVC didn’t suggest such injuries for my son: 1) None of the others involved in the crash suffered any injuries 2) No air bags deployed 3) Vehicle damage was minor. As an EMT for nearly a decade, I wondered about underlining health conditions in my son. I also considered he had not fully recovered from the first two concussions and was in denial about his symptoms in order to play hockey.

Sure enough, the neurologist diagnosed my son with hyper-mobile joints (something I already knew but wasn’t aware of the danger with contact sports.) The MD also diagnosed him with mild CP (cerebral palsy), a diagnosis that made sense to me since my son was born in respiratory arrest and was non-verbal and had spasticity until over age two. Both diagnosis are a recipe for injury, especially in contact sports. The MD gently told my son he was done playing goalie forever – it was devastating and crushed him. Understanding his hockey career was over, he admitted he’d ignored symptoms because he had a shot to play Junior Hockey, college hockey, and possibly professional hockey. A life-long athletic competitor myself, I completely understood the denial that led him to ignore his body.

Hyper-mobile joints, while creating an incredibly athletic body, are highly susceptible to any musculoskeletal injury in that individual. For my son, after two TBIs in a contact sport, his hyper-mobile neck was easily and severely whip-lashed in the MVC, jostling his brain fiercely, causing all his concussion symptoms to return and more heightened than ever.

Ten months after the car accident, the fourth TBI occurred December 2013 just days after the neurologist cleared my son to return to his life minus contact sports. The neurologist gave my son the green light to snowboard. That December day on the mountain, my son didn’t even hit his head and he sustained no head trauma – simply snowboarding jostled his brain enough to cause another TBI.   

Even though he’s extremely athletic, my son’s body shouldn’t do what it can to do. The risk of permanent brain damage and partial or full paralysis is too high for him-- something he now understands. I described it to him as this: When Cam Ward (the goalie for the NHL team Carolina Hurricanes) is playing goalie, his body is naturally like a SUV of protection in a MVC. Whereas, for my son, his body is like a motorcycle in a MVC – no protection.

Until Spring 2015, my son is restricted from doing anything with speed, wheels, height or repetition (basically everything fun.) This next year his brain will heal, then little by little he can attempt things (no contact sports ever, though) to see how his body responds. At 6’7” in height and extremely athletic, he appears a medically sound seventeen-year-old, but inside his body tells a different story. 

    

God works in amazing ways and this is my son’s blessing. Since cerebral palsy only affects motor function, and none of the four TBIs caused him any loss of cognitive abilities, he’s still as annoyingly brilliant as ever and is anxious to head off to college this fall. For now, his goal is to graduate medical school with a degree in neurology and become a neurosurgeon since he feels (understandably so) he can relate to patients’ symptoms with head trauma. 

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 Dianna Torscher Benson is a 2014 Selah Award Finalist (winners not yet announced), a 2011 Genesis Winner, a 2011 Genesis double Semi-Finalist, a 2010 Daphne de Maurier Finalist, and a 2007 Golden Palm Finalist. In 2012, she signed a nine-book contract with Ellechor Publishing House. She’s the author of The Hidden Son, her debut novel. Final Trimester is her second release.

After majoring in communications and a ten-year career as a travel agent, Dianna left the travel industry to earn her EMS degree. An EMT and a Haz-Mat and FEMA Operative since 2005, she loves the adrenaline rush of responding to medical emergencies and helping people in need.

Dianna lives in North Carolina with her husband and their three children. 

Website: www.diannatbenson.com

Her releases are available wherever books are sold. Below are the links to Final Trimester at the three largest booksellers:

Amazon.com

Barnes and Noble

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