Abbas A Shakir Alnaji
Al-sadder General Teaching Hospital, Iraq
Title: Vomiting is beneficial following traumatic head injury
Biography
Biography: Abbas A Shakir Alnaji
Abstract
Head injury is often associated with vomiting, which varies in frequency and severity with the magnitude of the injury. In this article, we want to throw some light on the nature of this phenomenon from social and medical visions. It is really of benefit to the patient. It should not be inhibited, the expelled fluid not replaced but assure the patient, vomiting is a regulatory neurophysiologic event that occurs to assist the body to accommodate itself against the changes inside the brain after being injured; hence it is not considered as a harmful reaction. The vomitus mainly is water with some hydrogen ion as HCl from the gastric content, which is a natural regulatory step taken by the body to bring a relative dehydration, for which, some use diuretics. Secondly, this hydrogen ion, however little in percentage, brings about smooth metabolic alkalosis; the third benefit of vomiting is the accompanying valsalva maneuver which is associated with sympathetic activation (fear) which brings for spontaneous hyperventilation then respiratory relative alkalosis. So the metabolic alkalosis caused from losing hydrogen ion with vomited water, along with the sympathetic hyperventilation alkalosis, decreases the blood acidity similar to what is practiced by some neurosurgeons to subject head injured patients to mechanical hyperventilation in ICU to wash CO2 (decrease blood acidity), so that cerebral vasoconstriction is attained