Severe head injury and steroids

ABSTRACT

Severe head injury been defined as one which results in the patients becoming unable to open his eyes, obey commands or to speak intelligible words for a period of 6 hours or more [1]. The mortality of 50% or more has been recorded in such cases from various canters [2, 3, 4]. In a attempt to improve the prognosis in an otherwise situations a number of therapeutic steps are taken with no experimental or clinical justification. The use of steroids is also one of these desperate attempts on part of the treating clinican the basis of which is ill understood. Before justification for the use of steroids is discussed a brief outline of changes in intracranial pressure and brain oedema is presented as a basis for discussion: