[Amnesia and closed craniocerebral injury. A clinical study of 82 cases]

In this investigation 82 patients with various head traumas are examined with respect to time and duration of retrograde, congrade and anterograde amnesia, especially the dependence of their duration on the severity of trauma. The more severe the trauma, the longer the duration of all forms of amnesia, the retrograde being the shorter whether there is a loss of conscience (congrade amnesia) or not. A tendency of amnesias to shrink could only be examined following mild brain trauma and occurred seldom. Our findings suggest that short amnesias have less tendency to shrink than long ones. The distribution of amnesias support cybernetic memory models. As a consequence of our findings we give recommendations for the clinical evaluation of patients with head-brain trauma.