The number of TBI's caused by injuries in the Iraq War continues to stretch the government's ability to treat them. As the following excellent article points out, no one was prepared for the high number of wounded, kept alive by improved body armor. And no one really knows exactly how many of those wounded are TBI survivors:

Only an estimated 2,000 cases of brain injury have been treated, but doctors think many less obvious cases have gone undetected. One small study found that more than half of one group of wounded troops arriving at Walter Reed Army Medical Center had brain injuries. Around the nation, a new effort is under way to check every returning man and woman for this possibility.

Even with the continuing media coverage of the war's injured, and the recent flurry of interest by Congress, I still don't think the average American's knowledge (or even awareness) of TBI has increased by much. I hope I'm wrong. I know that Bob Woodruff got a lot of press, and that he made the rounds of television talk shows. I suppose we just need to be patient. Change takes time, and it will be a while before people's understanding of TBI increases appreciably. Here's an excerpt from the article:

Orangeburg Times Democrat, June 23,2007 -- These are America's war wounded, a toll that has received less attention than the 3,500 troops killed in Iraq. Depending on how you count them, they number between 35,000 and 53,000.

More of them are coming home, with injuries of a scope and magnitude the government did not predict and is now struggling to treat.

"If we left Iraq tomorrow, we would have the legacy of all these people for many years to come," said Dr. Jeffrey Drazen, editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine and an adviser to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. "The military simply wasn't prepared for its own success" at keeping severely wounded soldiers alive, he said.

Continue here to read the entire article.

Labels: Iraq veterans, Iraq War, military, TBI, traumatic brain injury