HealthUnlocked advent calendar day 7 - Headway

[headwayuk]

Many brain injury survivors and their loved ones find sharing their experiences with similar people helps them take on those day to day challenges together.

To help promote the power of sharing we are taking part in HealthUnlocked's advent calendar Christmas campaign.

The social network site will feature a new health condition and its associated online community throughout the festive period.

Today is Headway's turn and the blog can be found here: blog.healthunlocked.com/201....

Let us know what you think!

[lloydyuk]

URL link not found on clicking

[bexx87 in reply to lloydyuk]

Copy and paste into toolbar blog.healthunlocked.com/201...

[cat3]

Oh my, those are really scary statistics. But the blog is very clearly worded and welcoming for anyone looking for support after brain injury ; just the right length too. I find since my BI that, when seeking information, I want facts but don't have the patience for unnecessary detail.

Best wishes, Cat3

[charlieab]

Looks great to me. And Im a big fan of the the helpline and the Swansea local group. Though not sure why teh Swansea group is outside Swansea and so darn hard to get to? A group bang smack in the city centre would be good and would be accessible by rail and bus to folk from neighbouring towns and cities like Cardiff and Llanelli.

only one little pedantic point. In the above post, do you mean "similar people" or maybe "people with similar experiences"? Not sure I would want to meet people similar to me! Would drive me crazy!

[charlieab]

If every 90 seconds someone is admitted with a brain injury and every three minutes with a head injury, does that mean half of admitted head injuries are also brain injuries? That seems quite a high ratio. There again my understanding of stats is close to zero so I might have got it mixed up.

[RogerCMerriman in reply to charlieab]

That is the stats it would seem so. Clearly there is quite a variation like yourself I’m surprised it’s that high. After all people do fracture their skulls with no lasting brain injury. But either way it’s a lot any how.

[charlieab in reply to RogerCMerriman]

True. Also people go to A&E with head injuries and no fracture, soemtimes to get X-ray and find there is no fracture.

Thereagain, how many of the presenting head injuries include brain injuries which dont get spotted.

[headwayuk Partner Headway in reply to charlieab]

Hi charlieab and Roger,

The 'every 90 seconds' stat is for all acquired brain injury, so this includes things like stroke, brain tumour, ruptured aneurym, encephalitis etc., as well as traumatic brain injuries as a result of head injury.

Hopefully that explains why the ratio seemed a little high (and we could have used the term 'acquired brain injury' on the blog post to make it clearer).

As you rightly say, many people present to A&E with head injuries that don't turn out to have caused a brain injury, but often a seemingly minor concussion can have unexpected long-term effects.

If you're interested, we break our stats down in a bit more detail on our website at headway.org.uk/about-brain-...

Best wishes,

Andrew

[charlieab in reply to headwayuk]

I did write a respone but maybe forgot to click the send thing. Anyways, thanks for the clarification and link. The research looks very interesting. Im wondering if there has been any research since indicating why total numbers of brain injuries have gone up and why the percentage of women among these have gone up.

best wishes

R

[RogerCMerriman in reply to charlieab]

The overall numbers is broadly in line with population, increases what is changing is that it is equalising with the sex’s or starting to, In that less men, but more women as a % as to why that is?