Introduction:

high mortality rate, prolonged hospitalizations, after-effects, economic and social damages make traumatic brain injuries one of the most important socio-economic problems today. Computerized axial tomography is considered the reference technique for detection.

Objective:

to identify the importance of emergency computerized axial tomography in traumatic brain injuries.

Method:

a descriptive, retrospective study performed to 917 patients who underwent skull computerized tomography at the time of admission, or within the first 24 hours after the head trauma, at Hospital Vladimir Ilich Lenin, Holguín, Cuba, during the period between June 2015 and June 2016, in search of intra and extracranial injuries resulting from trauma.

Results:

traumatic brain injuries predominated at ages 31-50 (30.1%), the most affected sex was male (75.3%), mild lesions predominated: contusions (16.3%) and linear fractures (10.9%). Traffic accidents (48.3%) were the main cause.

Conclusions:

Computerized axial tomography allowed diagnosis of injuries in more than half of the patients with head trauma in which, according to Glasgow classification, mild lesions predominated. It was possible to describe early signs of intracranial hypertension with the application of Marshall criteria.

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