Cerebral hypoxia

Cerebral hypoxia refers to a condition in which there is a decrease of oxygensupply to the braineven though there is adequate blood flow. Drowning, strangling, choking, suffocation, cardiac arrest, head trauma, carbon monoxidepoisoning, and complications of general anesthesiacan create conditions that can lead to cerebral hypoxia. Symptoms of mild cerebral hypoxia include inattentiveness, poor judgment, memory loss, and a decrease in motor coordination. Brain cellsare extremely sensitive to oxygen deprivation and can begin to die within five minutes after oxygen supply has been cut off. When hypoxia lasts for longer periods of time, it can cause coma, seizures, and even brain death. In brain death, basic life functions such as breathing, blood pressure, and cardiac function are preserved, but there is no consciousness or response to the world around.

Treatment

Treatment depends on the underlying cause of the hypoxia, but basic life-support systems have to be put in place: mechanical ventilation to secure the airway; fluids, blood products, or medications to support blood pressure and heart rate; and medications to suppress seizures.

Prognosis

Recovery depends on how long the brain has been deprived of oxygen and how much brain damage has occurred, although carbon monoxide poisoningcan cause brain damage days to weeks after the event. Most people who make a full recovery have only been briefly unconscious. The longer someone is unconscious, the higher the chances of death or brain death and the lower the chances of a meaningful recovery. During recovery, psychological and neurological abnormalities such as amnesia, personality regression, hallucinations, memory lossand muscle spasms and twitches may appear, persist, and then resolve.

See also

Hypoxia (medical)

External links

National Institute Neurological Disorders and Stroke(the public domain page this stub was created from)

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebral+hypoxia Wikipedia article Cerebral hypoxia.