Experimental model for the study of traumatic brain injury.

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) represents a public healthcare problem and a major economic burden, all over the world. It is estimated that every year, on the globe, there occur about two million severe TBI and over 42 million mild TBI. The main causes of TBI in civil population are fallings, followed by car accidents. In the last decades, the accelerated development of car industry and the poor development of traffic infrastructure in low- and average-income countries led to an increasing number of brain injuries, this becoming a major problem for medical health systems. According to some studies, approximately 1.35 million people die every year because of car accidents. In the last four decades, these types of injuries started to be studied in order to understand the lesion mechanisms for developing new safety equipment that may be installed on vehicles. The device presented by us for causing a TBI in a lab rat (mechanical pendulum) allows the performance of several major types of TBI, according to the kinetic energy, exposure area, contact surface, etc. The impact energies obtained by the device we presented may vary on a large scale, from less than 1 J up to 10 J, according to its weight, launching angle and impact head shape, thus being obtained minor, moderate or severe TBI.