For neurosurgeons, head injuries are always with us. They exist like the drones of a bagpipe tune, unchanging in the background while the music goes on elsewhere. This is perhaps why the last major textbook to be published on the subject was that of Jennett and Teasdale in 1981. However, for that small, and diminishing, band of neurosurgical researchers, head injuries provide ideal “case material” for the investigation of new ideas on the ways that insults affect the nervous system and how outcomes might be improved. The fruits of that thinking and investigation …