Managing head injury patients can be challenging. Actually they can be down right scary. Let’s face it, the closed head injury call can go sideways fast. They tend to be altered or unconscious. They can be angry and combative. They vomit. Their vital signs do weird things that are difficult to explain . They can breath too fast, too slow or not at all. (And sometimes they do all three.) The next time you’re in the middle of managing a difficult head injury patient, I want you to think about two things. There are limited things that we can do in the prehospital setting to fix a closed head injury. They need to be transported to an appropriate trauma facility. Our care is centered around managing them until we can get them to the definitive care that they need. With that in mind, here are the two cardinal sins of closed head injury care. These are the two things that need to be avoided at all costs. Two things… First thing. Never, ever, ever let a closed head injury become Hypoxic . Hypoxia will make a bad head injury become worse in a big hurry. Remember that respiratory status can be a moving target in the closed head injury patient. Anything goes with the rate and depth of respiration as a patient intra-cranial pressure rises

Original Source of Head Injury Management (Two Things)