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 'Cardiac arrest'

Cardiac arrest

The heart stops beating and there is no effective circulation of blood to the body, so that the brain and other organs rapidly become starved of oxygen (See also: HYPOXIA or ANOXIA)

Hypoxic-ischaemic injury

Damage caused by an interruption of oxygen supply (hypoxia) linked with a reduction in the blood flow to the brain (ischaemia), such as occurs when the heart stops beating in a cardiac arrest.

Respiratory arrest

Breathing stops and there is no effective supply of fresh oxygen to the blood from the lungs. If breathing is not restored, cardiac arrest will quickly follow, as the heart muscle becomes starved of oxygen.

Therapeutic hypothermia

Artificial cooling may be used to lower the core body temperature, as a means of reducing the metabolism of brain cells and decreasing their oxygen requirement. There is some evidence that this may have a protective effect on the brain following cardiac arrest and in other anoxic states, although this remains controversial.