Skull Fractures - Video Lesson

Hey, everybody. Welcome back. This lesson is about skull fractures that we can identify in sectional imaging. So here's an overview of the kinds of things that we'll be looking at. A skull fracture by definition is exactly what it sounds like. It's simply a break in the skull or cranial bone that usually occurs as a result of direct impact. In other words, skull fractures don't usually happen by accident. The thing about skull fractures is that they can sometimes cause brain injuries. We'd be talking about things like intracranial hemorrhage or cerebral edema. There's a number of different kinds of skull fractures. The first kind that we'll talk about is linear skull fractures. Linear skull fractures are the most common kind of fracture. The image to the left is an example of this, and it can be a little hard to identify. For example, let's look at the anterior side of this patient's skull. You'll see two lines through the skull and we might at first think those are fractures but those are actually