Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is seen by the insurance industry and many health care providers as an "event." Once treated and provided with a brief period of rehabilitation, the perception exists that patients with a TBI require little further treatment and face no lasting effects on the central nervous system or other organ systems. In fact, TBI is a chronic disease process, one that fits the World Health Organization definition as having one or more of the following characteristics: it is permanent, caused by non-reversible pathological alterations, requires special training of the patient for rehabilitation, and/or may require a long period of observation, supervision, or care. TBI increases long-term mortality and reduces life expectancy. It is associated with increased incidences of seizures, sleep disorders, neurodegenerative diseases, neuroendocrine dysregulation, and psychiatric diseases, as well as non-neurological disorders such as sexual dysfunction, bladder and bowel incontinence, and systemic metabolic dysregulation that may arise and/or persist for months to years post-injury. The purpose of this article is to encourage the classification of TBI as the beginning of an ongoing, perhaps lifelong process, that impacts multiple organ systems and may be disease causative and accelerative. Our intent is not to discourage patients with TBI or their families and caregivers, but rather to emphasize that TBI should be managed as a chronic disease and defined as such by health care and insurance providers. Furthermore, if the chronic nature of TBI is recognized by government and private funding agencies, research can be directed at discovering therapies that may interrupt the disease processes months or even years after the initiating event.

In terms of human suffering, medical expenses, and lost productivity, head injury is one of the major health care problems in the United States, and inadequate cerebral blood flow is an important contributor to mortality and morbidity after traumatic brain injury. Despite the importance of cerebral vascular dysfunction in the pathophysiology of traumatic brain injury, the effects of trauma on the cerebral circulation have been less well studied than the effects of trauma on the brain. Recent research has led to a better understanding of the physiologic, cellular, and molecular components and causes of traumatic cerebral vascular injury. A more thorough understanding of the direct and indirect effects of trauma on the cerebral vasculature will lead to improvements in current treatments of brain trauma as well as to the development of novel and, hopefully, more effective therapeutic strategies.

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The appearance of superoxide anion radical in cerebral extracellular space during and after acute hypertension induced by intravenous norepinephrine was investigated in anesthetized cats equipped with cranial windows. Superoxide was detected by demonstrating the presence of superoxide dismutase-inhibitable reduction of nitroblue tetrazolium. The superoxide dismutase-inhibitable rate of reduction of nitroblue tetrazolium was 4.1 +/- 1.61 nM/min per cm2 during hypertension and 4.55 +/- 0.62 nM/min per cm2 one hour after hypertension had subsided. During norepinephrine administration in the absence of hypertension, the superoxide dismutase-inhibitable rate of reduction of nitroblue tetrazolium was 0.44 +/- 0.17 nM/min per cm2. The reduction of nitroblue tetrazolium during hypertension was also inhibited by prior treatment of the brain surface with phenylglyoxal at pH 10, to induce irreversible inhibition of the anion channel. The results show that acute hypertension is associated with the generation of superoxide which enters the extracellular space of the brain via the anion channel. Following hypertension, the sustained vasodilation caused by acute hypertension was inhibited significantly by topical application of superoxide dismutase and catalase, showing that it was due in part to superoxide and other radicals derived from it. The vasodilator response of cerebral arterioles to topical acetylcholine was converted to vasoconstriction following acute hypertension, and restored to vasodilation following topical application of superoxide dismutase and catalase. The results show that superoxide and other radicals generated after acute hypertension interfere with acetylcholine-induced endothelium-dependent vasodilation, probably because they destroy the endothelium-derived relaxant factor.