Common brain injury terms

This section is designed to provide a glossary of terms, explaining some of the different words you might hear when reading information on, or talking about, brain injury.

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Your search results for 'Amnesia'

Amnesia

Failure of memory.  (also see POST TRAUMATIC AMNESIA) – amnesia following a traumatic event)

Head injury - mild/minor

May causes brief loss of consciousness for 15 minutes or less with a period of post-traumatic amnesia of less than 1 hour.

Head injury - moderate

Defined as being a condition where the patient has been in a coma for 6 hours, and a period of post-traumatic amnesia of up to 24 hours.

Head injury - severe

Defined as being a condition where the patient has been in a coma for 6 hours or more, or a post-traumatic amnesia of 24 hours or more.

Post-traumatic amnesia (PTA)

The period after being unconscious when there may be confused behaviour and no continuous memory of day to day events.

Retrograde amnesia

The loss of memory of events for a period prior to the injury.