[cnn-photo-caption image=http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/images/04/09/gupta.mont.tremblant.jpg caption="Dr. Sanjay Gupta on assignment in Mont Tremblant, Canada."]
By Dr. Sanjay Gupta
CNN Chief Medical Correspondent
Watch Dr. Gupta's full report Thursday on AC360 at 10pm ET.
I just returned from Mont Tremblant, Canada. It is one of the more beautiful ski resorts in eastern, Canada, and it is also the place where actress Natasha Richardson fell and suffered a fatal brain injury. What caused her death is now well known, but there were some other details that struck me while I was there. Let me try and work through this with you.
What no one knew at the time was that she had hit her head hard enough to cause a fracture in her skull. Just underneath that fracture is a small blood vessel that runs just on top of the brain, and it was that blood vessel that started to bleed. By many reports, Richardson got up after her fall and felt well enough to go back to her room and wave off paramedics who had been called. In neurosurgery, we refer to this as a lucid interval. She may have lost consciousness briefly, but now felt fine. The problem for Natasha or anyone with an epidural hematoma is that the pressure continues to build up in the brain.