STUDIES ON THE HEAD INJURIES OF HUMAN SUBJECTS IN ADVANCED AGE (I)

Statistical evaluation of 218 patients with closed head injury in advanced age over 60 was conducted, obtaining the following results:1) In terms of the causes of the head injuries, traffic accidents with auto-mobiles shared 61.9% of the total, of which the accidents while walking on foot shared 50.9%. Falling also shared a relatively high percentage of 17.0%.2) No significant difference could be seen between the senile patients and adult patients in lower age in terms of the period of unconsciousness, 3) The main subjective symptoms experienced (lasting for more than a week) were headache, dizziness, head heaviness, fatigability, forgetfulness, tinni-tus, emotional variability, and so on in this decremental order.4) Of all the frequent objective symptoms experienced, pyramidal symptoms and cranial nerve paralysis or paresis were most frequent among other neuro-logical symptoms, and dimentia, changes in characters, and loss of memory were most frequent among other psychic symptoms.5) The results of the accessory diagnosis demonstrated that skull fractures in senile patients shared 5.9% of all the patients we evaluated; this was some-what higher than that of the adult patients in lower age. The frequency of ab-normal electroencephalographic patterns was more markedly frequent than that of the adult patients in lower age.Our acknowledgments are due Prof. Tatsuyuki Kudo for his revision of this report.