Injury Metrics for Assessing the Risk of Acute Subdural Hematoma in Traumatic Events.

Abstract

Worldwide, the ocurrence of acute subdural hematomas (ASDHs) in road traffic crashes is a major public health problem. ASDHs are usually produced by loss of structural integrity of one of the cerebral bridging veins (CBVs) linking the parasagittal sinus to the brain. Therefore, to assess the risk of ASDH it is important to know the mechanical conditions to which the CBVs are subjected during a potentially traumatic event (such as a traffic accident or a fall from height). Recently, new studies on CBVs have been published allowing much more accurate prediction of the likelihood of mechanical failure of CBVs. These new data can be used to propose new damage metrics, which make more accurate predictions about the probability of occurrence of ASDH in road crashes. This would allow a better assessement of the effects of passive safety countermeasures and, consequently, to improve vehicle restraint systems. Currently, some widely used damage metrics are based on partially obsolete data and measurements of the mechanical behavior of CBVs that have not been confirmed by subsequent studies. This paper proposes a revision of some existing metrics and constructs a new metric based on more accurate recent data on the mechanical failure of human CBVs.