headaches,tinnitus anddifuse axonal damage

[newrich]

I was rear ended by a heavy truck 4 years ago the neurologyst told me I had difuse axonal damage causing impairment in my cognitive functions and headaches .
I am taking lyrica and helps some but if I don't take is my headache going to be permanent? and can difuse axonal damage be seeing in a mri?

[NaniKai]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffuse_axonal_injury

The above link is to reference for more information. I did give a head start on the reading for you but I personally would read a little further...
Diffuse axonal injury (DAI) is one of the most common and devastating types of brain injury (Iwata et al., 2004), occurring in almost half of all cases of severe head trauma (Park and Hyun, 2004). It is a type of diffuse brain injury, meaning that damage occurs over a more widespread area than in focal brain injury. DAI, which refers to extensive lesions in white matter tracts, is one of the major causes of unconsciousness and persistent vegetative state after head trauma (Wasserman, 2004).

Though diffuse axonal injury seldom leads to death, the outcome is frequently coma with over 90% of patients with severe DAI never regaining consciousness (Wasserman, 2004). Those who do wake up often remain significantly impaired (Vinas and Pilistis, 2004).

Contents [hide]
1 Mechanism
2 Characteristics
3 Histological characteristics
3.1 Cytoskeleton disruption
3.2 Calcium influx
4 Diagnosis and treatment
5 Future treatments
6 See also
7 External links
8 References



[edit] Mechanism
Unlike brain trauma that occurs due to direct impact and deformation of the brain, DAI is the result of traumatic shearing forces that occur when the head is rapidly accelerated or decelerated, as may occur in auto accidents, falls, and assaults (reviewed in Wolf et al., 2001). It usually results from twisting or rotational forces (angular momentum), rather than forward and back impacts linear momentum (Sanders and McKenna, 2001; Wasserman, 2004; Shepherd, 2004). Car accidents are the most frequent causes of DAI, with sports accidents and child abuse also common causes (Smith and Greenwald, 2003).

The major cause of damage in DAI is the tearing of axons, the neural processes that allow one neuron to communicate with another. Tracts of axons, which appear white due to myelination, are referred to as white matter. Acceleration causes shearing injury, which refers to damage inflicted as tissue slides over other tissue. When the brain is accelerated, parts of differing densities and distances from the axis of rotation slide over one another, stretching axons that traverse junctions between areas of different density, especially gray-white matter junctions (Wasserman, 2004). Two thirds of DAI lesions occur in areas where grey and white matter meet (Wasserman, 2004).

NaniKai