Head and Neck Trauma

Trauma is life-threatening injury. Head and neck trauma can occur from numerous causes of injury. Motor vehicle collisions, physical assault, industrial accidents, and sports injuries are all common causes of head and neck trauma.

Injury to the head and neck can cause blocked airway, facial deformity, seizures, speech problems, paralysis, coma and a wide variety of other symptoms and issues. The head and neck trauma team, led by Jacob Husseman, MD, works closely with the UC San Diego Level 1 Trauma Center to rapidly and effectively address emergency conditions related to the head and neck.

Our multidisciplinary team assesses the need for resuscitation, establishing an airway, ventilating, fluid replacement and other responses to stabilize people who have experienced critical injury of the head and neck. We examine the skull for fractures, including around the eye, midfacial skeleton and jaw. We assess for cranial nerve injuries, major blood vessel damage, and injury to the aerodigestive tract (breathing and swallowing systems) – and work with radiologists to quickly evaluate the extent of injury using advanced imaging equipment.

We treat these injuries with the highest level of care to get you home, recovered and back to your life. A person who has sustained a life-threatening injury in San Diego County stands twice the chance of surviving than if the injury had occurred in nearly any other part of the U.S. (Read more about trauma care.)

Treatment of serious head and neck injury regularly involves the experience of facial nerve experts, facial plastic and reconstructive surgeons, skull-base surgeons, vascular surgeons, neurosurgeons, trauma surgeons, rehabilitation therapists and orthopedists.