-Each year, 1.4 million Americans sustain a traumatic brain injury each year. Of these, 1.1 million are treated and released from ERs, 235,00o are hospitalized, and 50,000 die from their injuries. (Source: Centers for Disease Control).
-Brain injury can be caused by any number of traumatic incidents that affect a person's brain. Some causes include airway obstruction, electric shock, direct trauma to the head (e.g. sports injuries or bicycle accidents), heart attack, stroke, and toxic exposures. No two brain injuries are exactly alike.
-Wear your helmet: something as simple as proper use of a bicycle helmet can reduce the risk of brain injury by as much as 88%. (Source: Palo Alto Medical Foundation)
1 comment:
Actually, bike helmet laws have stopped a lot of people cycling and have done nothing for head injury rates, see Robinson DL. No clear evidence from countries that have enforced the wearing of helmets. BMJ 2006;332: 722-5. http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/332/7543/722-a. It appears that helmets break easily, but don't absorb the impact, see the engineers quoted at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_helmet. A broken helmet has simply failed. Helmets have also strangled some young children who were wearing helmets while playing off their bicycles. At my moderately advanced age it's far too dangerous not to cycle - regular cycling, Danish style, not too far, not too fast, nearly halves the death rate, see http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/160/11/1621.
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