Fell On Back And Got Head Injury. CT Scan Normal. Having Stomach Pain And Nausea. Reason?

Posted on Wed, 6 Mar 2013

Medically reviewed by Ask A Doctor - 24x7 Medical Review Team

Wed, 6 Mar 2013 Answered on

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 Last reviewed on

Question : I fell last week really hard on my back and hit my head. They did a CT scan and it was negative. I am having stomach pain and nausea. I called the work comp doctor and he said go to the ER for another CT scan. What difference can one CT scan to another make.

Answered by Dr. Nsah Bernard (16 minutes later)

Hello XXXXXXX,

Thanks for posting on XXXXXXX

Let me answer your question straight forwardly. Usually in cases of head injury there can be two forms of intracranial evolutions, slow progressive intracranial bleeding or lesion and rapid onset with immediate clinical manifestations such as headache, vomiting, paraplegia etc. CT scan done after head injury is to determine if there is an immediate lesion (intracranial bleeding) and if after a while you start manifesting some symptoms, another CT scan might be indicated to determine if there was a slow progressive intracranial bleeding or lesion which can become worst if left untreated.
But to me, asking another CT scan based only on stomach pain and nausea is not necessary. The cause of stomach pain and nausea could be checked by careful physical examination. You might simply be suffering from peptic ulcer diseases probably due to the in take of NSAID (which are known to have side effects of gastric ulcers).

Hope this info helps and if you have any other questions please feel free to write back or if you are satisfied to accept my answer.
Dr. Bernard

Above answer was peer-reviewed by : Dr. Chakravarthy Mazumdar