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Had Hit On Head. It Pains And Neck Also Hurts With Shoulder. Need For Concern?
Question: I was picking up something under the kitchen countertop and stood up quickly. I hit the back right side of my head on the granite pretty hard and now my head hurts (although the pain is subsiding) and my neck hurts down the right side from where I hit my head to my right shoulder. Any need for concern?
Hello,
Thanks for the query.
You have a cranial trauma and cranial trauma is not uncommon in day to day actvities. However, the majority of the cases of head trauma have no underlying effects on the brain which is protected by the cranium ( bony structure housing the brain).
Cranial injury is classified into three categories based on scale known as the Glasgow coma scale; mild, moderate and severe trauma. In mild, there is no initial loss of consciousness nor motor deficits and this is what you have. Mild cranial generally do not have any acute injury to the brain which is what is feared most.
However, any head trauma needs to be followed up progressively as there might be mild bleeding inside the brain that would grow gradually and one day cause a problem. In such case, the problem would result due to increase pressure inside the cranium which will compress the brain. Symptoms of increase pressure in the brain include;
-progressive headache not calm down with pain killers,
-repeated vomiting
-weakness of body parts; limbs say
-visual disorder
-cloudy consciousness etc etc.
The appearance of any of such symptoms requires immediate consultation and for a CT scan to be done.
Given your situation now, you should be more alert to detect any abnormality or the above cited symptom as soon as possible and get some pain killers say paracetamol or ibuprofen. You might want to consider doing an x-ray to check if there was no bone fracture.
Hope this answers your query. If you have more query, i will be glad to contribute help.
Best regards
Thanks for the query.
You have a cranial trauma and cranial trauma is not uncommon in day to day actvities. However, the majority of the cases of head trauma have no underlying effects on the brain which is protected by the cranium ( bony structure housing the brain).
Cranial injury is classified into three categories based on scale known as the Glasgow coma scale; mild, moderate and severe trauma. In mild, there is no initial loss of consciousness nor motor deficits and this is what you have. Mild cranial generally do not have any acute injury to the brain which is what is feared most.
However, any head trauma needs to be followed up progressively as there might be mild bleeding inside the brain that would grow gradually and one day cause a problem. In such case, the problem would result due to increase pressure inside the cranium which will compress the brain. Symptoms of increase pressure in the brain include;
-progressive headache not calm down with pain killers,
-repeated vomiting
-weakness of body parts; limbs say
-visual disorder
-cloudy consciousness etc etc.
The appearance of any of such symptoms requires immediate consultation and for a CT scan to be done.
Given your situation now, you should be more alert to detect any abnormality or the above cited symptom as soon as possible and get some pain killers say paracetamol or ibuprofen. You might want to consider doing an x-ray to check if there was no bone fracture.
Hope this answers your query. If you have more query, i will be glad to contribute help.
Best regards
Note: For further follow up on related General & Family Physician Click here.
Above answer was peer-reviewed by :
Dr. Chakravarthy Mazumdar
Answered by
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