Fighting Brain Injury in Iraq
The war in Iraq is bringing a well-documented but hardly understood battlefield injury into the limelight: traumatic brain injury (TBI). In an effort to learn more about the injury, the U.S. Army awarded Simbex, of Lebanon, NH, a million-dollar contract to develop sensor-studded helmets for combat soldiers. The army is currently testing the helmet technology, which could be deployed as early as December of this year.
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DOD, VA medical programs too complex for those with brain-damage
The bureaucracies that are supposed to help brain-injured war veterans are too complex for them to navigate, a panel of military and medical experts concluded at a meeting Tuesday.

Specifically, the departments of Veterans Affairs and Defense need better coordination of their programs, according to the panel, which was part of a daylong Washington Defense Forum sponsored by the U.S. Naval Institute and the Military Officers Association of America.

The panel included two military officers, a doctor, a lobbyist and the chief executive officer of the Brain Injury Association of America.

"The systems in the VA and DOD seem to be against what brain injury can handle," said Susan Connor, chief executive officer the Brain Injury Association. "Because the frontal lobe controls memory, thinking, judgment and processing ... if you shove paperwork in front of someone with sustained brain injury or put them in a large group with scripted instructions, they can't follow it."
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Nonfatal TBIs From Sports and Recreation Activities
Each year in the United States, an estimated 38 million children and adolescents participate in organized sports,1 and approximately 170 million adults participate in some type of physical activity not related to work.2 The health benefits of these activities are tempered by the risk for injury, including traumatic brain injury (TBI). CDC estimates that 1.1 million persons with TBIs are treated and released from U.S. hospital emergency departments (EDs) each year, and an additional 235,000 are hospitalized for these injuries.3 TBIs can result in long-term, negative health effects (e.g., memory loss and behavioral changes).3 To characterize sports- and recreation-related (SR-related) TBIs among patients treated in U.S. hospital EDs, CDC analyzed data from the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System–All Injury Program (NEISS-AIP) for the period 2001-2005. This report summarizes the results of that analysis, which indicated that an estimated 207,830 patients with nonfatal SR-related TBIs were treated in EDs each year during this period. The highest rates of SR-related TBI ED visits for both males and females occurred among those aged 10-14 years. Increased awareness of TBI risks, prevention strategies, and the importance of timely identification and management is essential for reducing the incidence, severity, and long-term negative health effects of this type of injury.
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Labels: Iraq War, TBI, traumatic brain injury