Systemic Complications and Peripheral Nerve, Bone and Joint Injury

Abstract

This chapter deals both with those disabilities persisting in the long-term which have arisen as a result of injury to structures apart from the brain and cranial nerves, and also with those systemic disorders other than the metabolic ones already considered. There is no detailed review of the extent to which these complications contributed to the problems of rehabilitation in the survivors who were re-examined, although this was often substantial, since the principal aim of this investigation was the assessment of long-term outcome after severe trauma to the central nervous system. Attempts to assess the time sequence of recovery of the central neural lesions were complicated by the presence of long bone fractures, despite the fact that they played a small part in eventual disability.