Traumatic Brain Injury: Skull Implant

The skull often is broken when a severe head injury occurs. Parts of the skull bone can press into the brain and pierce the brain tissue. Injured brain tissue can also swell or bleed. Loss of oxygen to a part of the brain can cause that area of the brain to die. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimate that 1.4 million traumatic brain injuries occur each year in the United States. About 235,000 of these people are hospitalized and 50,000 die. In children under the age of 14, TBIs lead to 37,000 hospitalizations and 2,685 deaths.

Skull Implant

However, advances in medical technology offer promising new treatments for those affected by traumatic brain injuries. Four-year-old Jack Stapleton fell from a boat in 2004 and severely injured his brain. Doctors did not expect that he would survive, but Jack defied the odds and began to show signs of recovery. This confronted doctors with a new problem: the fall had destroyed a large part of Jack's skull and they would need to replace a part of the lost skull to protect the brain. Because Jack was not big enough that bone from another part of his body could be transplanted into the skull, doctors had to use man-made materials to fill the gap. While Jack still requires medical monitoring, his skull now is intact.