A Good Poop

Golf clubs are dangerous weapons

Posted by Chris on December 7, 2008
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McIntosh BC, Strugar J, Narayan D. Traumatic frontal bone fracture resulting in intracerebral pneumocephalus. J Craniofac Surg. 2005 May;16(3):461-3.

Some college-aged kid got smacked in the face with a golf club, breaking a bunch of stuff that required a fair bit of surgery to repair. Kid shows up a couple of weeks later leaking spinal cord juice from his nose and complaining of headache. He is diagnosed with intracerebral pneumocephalus (IP), which is doctor-speak for having air inside your brain. Back to the OR he goes, where they somehow get the air out of his brain.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, IP is usually the result of being hit really hard in the head with something. Not only do you have to fracture your skull, you also have to tear the dura mater and arachnoid mater. Apparently one of the possible symptoms of IP is hearing a splashing sound akin to liquid sloshing around in your head whenever you move it.

Oh, and here’s a photo of IP:

i-137249f02c14f583d558ed168539945c-air in brain.jpg

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Comments

  1. #1 llewelly
    December 7, 2008

    ‘pneumocephalus’ ? That’s a medical term? I’m laughing at that. The group I ran with in high school used that very word to designate stupid people (or people we perceived as stupid).

  2. #2 Mike
    December 7, 2008

    llewelly: Clearly someone stupid at your school heard the word and thought it sounded stupid.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumocephalus

  3. #3 Arikia
    December 7, 2008

    Woah, you are alive! Cool post =)

  4. #4 Chase
    December 8, 2008

    Or .. they put 2 and 2 together and thought hmmm maybe that’s a fancy way to say AIRHEAD !!!! you Airhead =p

  5. #5 Foreman
    December 9, 2008

    I’m with Chase on this one.

    Also, nice to see this blog is still alive. Note, Chris, that this post received 4 comments in a day, on a blog that hasn’t been updated in over 2 months. You’ve got followers, don’t leave them hanging. ;-)

  6. #6 Toaster
    December 10, 2008

    Chris, you OK?

    I note that you’ve updated neither of your blogs much at all in the past several months. Pharmacology school finally squeezing each last bit of free will and leisure time from your gasping lungs?

  7. #7 Chris
    December 11, 2008

    Foreman, a fine reminder. I’ll try to keep things a little more, er, regular around here.

    Toast, I’m fine. I got a little burnt out blogging-wise around the same time that research in the lab got particularly exiting (read: late nights), so I decided to take a little break.

  8. #8 andrea
    January 21, 2009

    No offense meant but I think your heading “Golf clubs are dangerous weapons” is quite conclusive. It doesn’t necessarily mean that way just because it caused the kid’s misfortune.

    To quote: “Perhaps unsurprisingly, IP is usually the result of being hit really hard in the head with something.”—maybe a baseball bat or ball or accidentally you tripped over and fell hard on the concrete pavement.