Characteristics of patients, type of accident, and mortality in a consecutive series of head injuries admitted to a neurosurgical unit.

There have been surprisingly few studies of representative samples of civilian head injuries, the great majority of which, unlike wartime injuries are closed injuries. Recent reports have come from the United States (Gurdjian and Thomas, 1965), Australia (Selecki, Hoy, and Ness, 1967), and Canada (Klonoff and Thompson, 1969). In this country, Barr and Ralston (1964) described 532 patients admitted over a five-year period to a general hospital with special facilities, the type of hospital to which, according to Steadman and Graham (1970) sur- veyed 484 patients admitted to a provincial teaching hospital in one year. They remarked on the need for full clinical records of head injured patients and suggested these might be best provided by a specialized centre.