From the Brain Injury News and Information Blog:

Congratulations to New York City's Mount Sinai School of Medicine for being designated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as its newest Injury Control Research Center (ICRC). The new center will conduct research on persons with traumatic brain injuries in order to better understand the consequences of their injury and to help enhance the quality of their lives.

CDC’s Injury Control Research Centers (ICRC) are located at 13 universities throughout the United States. At each ICRC, scientists from a wide spectrum of disciplines focus upon discovering how to prevent and control injuries more effectively. They also work to identify critical knowledge gaps in injury risk and protection and also conduct research to address these gaps.

Keep reading.

Labels: head injuries, TBI, TBI research, traumatic brain injury

The following is from Medill Reports, a site written and produced by graduate journalism students at Northwestern University’s Medill school.

Professional boxers receive hundreds of neck-snapping, head-jarring blows per match on a regular basis.

Pitting a professional against an amateur would surely result in something straight out of a John Woo movie. However, amateur boxers could teach the professionals a thing or two, especially in regard to safety and traumatic brain injury.

Amateur boxers, according to a study released over the weekend in the British Journal of Medicine, appear not to suffer from any long-term lingering effects of brain trauma because of the safety precautions the International Boxing Association of Amateurs takes on behalf of its athletes.

An average punch to the head by a professional boxer has the equivalent effect as a 13-pound bowling bowl traveling 20 mph, according to the American Association of Neurological Surgeons.

Julie Goldsticker, director of media and public relations for USA Boxing, said the main objective of the organization is safety—period. “The safety of our athletes is the main priority of every official and coach in our sports. It’s something we do and want for each athlete.”

Many organizations like USA Boxing, which is the national governing body of amateur, Olympic-style boxing in the country, have safety regulations in place to physically protect its athletes. All boxers must wear protective head gear, specialized boxing gloves, waist belts indicating the punch above-and below-point, mouth pieces and t-shirts.

USA Boxing has undertaken a few different measures to ensure the utmost safety for its athletes, said Dr. Charles Butler, chief medical officer for USA Boxing.

The organization knocked down the time for each round from three minutes to two minutes because studies showed most concussions occurred in the last minute of each round. USA Boxing instituted more stringent mandatory leaves of absence for boxers who suffer concussions.

Keep reading article.

Guess it's a pipe dream to hope that professional boxing will follow suit any time soon.

Labels: head injuries, TBI, traumatic brain injury

Reuters last week reported that children who suffer a head injury are quite likely to have a similar injury subsequently.

"We do not really understand the mechanism behind repetitive head injuries in children," Dr. Bonnie R. Swaine, of the University of Montreal, Canada, told Reuters Health. "These results support anecdotal evidence of the phenomenon."

As for an explanation, Swaine continued, "It is reasonable that children with a head injury who do not regain their pre-injury state of health could be at risk for another injury."

Read the entire article.

Labels: brain injuries, head injuries, TBI, traumatic brain injury

Reuters, March 21, 2007.
More Americans are being hospitalized with very serious head injuries, and government statisticians say they don't know why. Statisticians on Wednesday reported a 38 percent increase in hospital admissions for the most serious kind of head injury, type 1 traumatic brain injury, between 2001 and 2004. The biggest single cause was falls.

The researchers found that in 2004, nearly 204,000 people were treated in hospitals for traumatic brain injury at a cost of $3.2 billion...The figures do not include military personnel or people treated at Veterans Affairs hospitals. Nor did they include people who died before they made it to the hospital.

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Labels: head injuries, TBI, traumatic brain injury, Veterans