Posttraumatic Cerebral Vascular Injuries

Abstract

The range of vessels damaged from physical insult to the craniocerebrum is complete, though capillary damage (expressing itself clinically as cerebral contusion) in the newborn and venous damage in the infant (expressing itself clinically as subacute subdural hematoma) are the most commonly encountered. Because of the redundancy of the arteries within the basal cisterns and fissures, the long course of the cortical bridging veins within the subarachnoid spaces, and the location of the superior sagittal sinus beneath the metopic and sagittal sutures, these three vascular structures are particularly susceptible to the shearing forces that represent the characteristic pathogenesis of craniocerebral vascular damage in the fetus, newborn, and infant. This casts into sharp relief the significance of traumatic vascular pathology in these age categories.