Every 90 seconds, someone in the UK is admitted to hospital with a brain injury – that’s a staggering 350,000 people per year.

Headway’s UK-wide Action for Brain Injury (ABI) Week is an annual campaign designed to raise awareness and understanding of brain injury and to help elevate survivors and their loved ones voices.

This year’s ABI Week campaign entitled Every 90 Seconds, takes place from May 15-21 and will highlight how common brain injuries are and how they can affect any of us at any time.

Action for Brain Injury Week (ABI Week) 2023 (15th to 21st May) focuses on a powerful statistic: every 90 seconds, someone in the UK is admitted to hospital with a brain injury.

Strokes, falls, road traffic collisions, assaults, brain tumours, meningitis... these are just a few examples of brain injury causes.

It only takes a few seconds for a life to be completely knocked off course.

Brain injuries can have devastating, life-long effects on anyone, including you and your loved ones.

Take a second to find out more and, if you can, please get involved – by donating, volunteering, or simply raising awareness of our services – because every 90 seconds, someone like you needs our help.

Most common causes of traumatic brain injury

Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) is an injury to the brain caused by a trauma to the head (head injury). 

Falls, road traffic collisions and assaults are the most common causes of traumatic brain injury (TBI). Each year, around 150,000 people are admitted to hospital with a head injury that can result in a TBI, which can have devastating and lifelong consequences.

TBIs can be mild, moderate or severe. Mild TBI is also referred to as a concussion. Information about mild brain injuries is available here. 

The average number of hospital admissions for types of brain injury in the UK

Using hospital admissions statistics, Headway has compiled a dataset on all acquired brain injury (ABI) related hospital admissions in the UK.

Examine the image below to see the figures for Meningitis, brain tumour, stroke, and head injury admissions. 

*Data is for England, Wales and Northern Ireland hospital admissions only and based upon Headway's Hospital admission statistics over a 10-year period.

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