| Traumatic Brain Injury in the War
Zone |
Among surviving soldiers wounded in combat in Iraq
and Afghanistan, TBI appears to account for a larger proportion of
casualties than it has in other recent U.S. wars. According to the Joint
Theater Trauma Registry, compiled by the U.S. Army Institute of Surgical
Research, 22 percent of the wounded soldiers from these conflicts who have
passed through the military's Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany
had injuries to the head, face, or neck. This percentage can serve as a
rough estimate of the fraction who have TBI More about soilders with TBI |
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| Sequelae of minor traumatic brain
injury |
Post-traumatic amnesia--the period after a
traumatic brain injury when a patient is unable to form ongoing memoryis
another useful indicator of the severity of injury. A brief period of
post-traumatic amnesia (no longer than 60 minutes) is indicative of mild
injury to the brain. More about minor brain injury |
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| What is TBI? |
| Traumatic brain injury
(TBI), also called acquired brain injury or simply head injury, occurs
when a sudden trauma causes damage to the brain. TBI can result when the
head suddenly and violently hits an object, or when an object pierces the
skull and enters brain tissue. More on Traumatic Brain Injury |
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| March
is Brain Injury Awareness Month |
March is Brain Injury
Awareness Month, and this year, CDC will again support the Brain Injury
Association of America's "Living with Brain Injury" campaign. The goals of
this three-year campaign are to improve the lives of individuals living
with brain injury, their families and caregivers, and to raise awareness
about brain injuries nationwide. More on Brain
Injury Awareness Month |
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| Traumatic Brain Injury: Hope Through
Research |
TBI costs the country more than $56 billion a
year, and more than 5 million Americans alive today have had a TBI
resulting in a permanent need for help in performing daily activities.
Survivors of TBI are often left with significant cognitive, behavioral,
and communicative disabilities, and some patients develop long-term
medical complications, such as epilepsy. More about Traumatic Brain injury research |
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| Living with Traumatic Brain Injury: Post-Rehabilitation
Recovery |
Neuropsychological evaluation is useful in
determining which cognitive functions are intact (or nearly so) and which
are impaired after a traumatic brain injury. Unfortunately, family members
only occasionally have an opportunity to discuss test results. When such
discussions do occur, the words used by the neuropsychologist may be quite
technical and family members may not understand how things like "impaired
initiation", "left neglect", or "apraxia" might be observed in daily life. more
on Traumatic Brain Injury Rehabilitation |
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| Recovering from a Brain Injury |
There
is no question that maximizing recovery from head injury is expensive,
time consuming, and emotionally draining. Like the rest of us, individuals
who sustain head injuries rarely reach their full potential. At some
point, the individual may "burnout" and decide that further efforts toward
remediating deficits or acquiring additional skills is not worth the
effort involved. The decision to temporarily suspend or terminate formal
rehabilitation does not necessarily mean that recovery will stop or that
skill levels will deteriorate. more on Brain Injury Recovery |
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| Clinical Trials in Head
Injury |
Millions of head injuries occur each year. The
World Bank estimates that approximately five million head injuries per
year can be attributed just to traffic accidents worldwide. A sizeable
fraction of the patients die, and a sizeable fraction survive with severe,
long-term disabilities. Tissue damage associated with head injury include
axonal injury, focal contusions and edema, and intracranial hematomas and
swelling. To repair the original injury is acknowledged to be difficult,
but the spread of secondary damage to the brain can possibly be contained. Read more about Clinical Trials in Head Injury |
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