Improving life after brain injury Need to talk? The brain needs a continuous supply of oxygen to survive. If the oxygen supply is interrupted, the functioning of the brain is disturbed immediately and irreversible damage can quickly follow.
This is known as hypoxic or anoxic brain injury. The information on this page will be particularly useful for the family members of people who have sustained such an injury and also provides a useful starting point for professionals who wish to improve their knowledge of the subject. All the technical terms that are used are highlighted in bold and explained on the Common brain injury terms page.
Oxygen is needed for the brain to make use of glucose, its major energy source. If the oxygen supply is interrupted, consciousness will be lost within 15 seconds and damage to the brain begins to occur after about four minutes without oxygen.
A complete interruption of the supply of oxygen to the brain is referred to as cerebral anoxia. If there is still a partial supply of oxygen, but at a level which is inadequate to maintain normal brain function, this is known as cerebral hypoxia. In practice, these two terms tend to be used interchangeably. For the purposes of consistency, this section of the website will use the terms anoxic brain injury or cerebral anoxia, unless hypoxic injury is specifically meant.
The diagnosis of an anoxic brain injury is usually quite clear at an early stage from the details of what has happened and the patient's condition on arrival at hospital. Due to the wide variety of causes of anoxia, immediate treatment will depend on the particular circumstances.
