VUOTO: VA accused of waste, cover-up July 24, 2009
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“A lie cannot live forever,” said neurologist Robert Van Boven, quoting a phrase used by Martin Luther King and others going back to Victorian-era writer Thomas Carlyle.
Dr. Van Boven was removed in February 2008 from his position as director of Veterans Affairs’ Brain Imaging and Recovery Laboratory (BIRL) in Austin, Texas, after months of asking why the facility had spent millions of dollars to study traumatic brain injury without treating a single veteran.
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Dog helps woman lick brain injury July 24, 2009
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ST. LOUIS — Mary Phillips admits she had a frosty relationship with Jacque Pierre, a co-worker’s Maltese poodle. That is until the day he saved her life by licking her head.
The unlikely gesture, Phillips said, convinced her to go to the emergency room where doctors discovered a brain aneurysm the size of a walnut.
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PTSD Doubles Dementia Risk in Vets July 24, 2009
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There is mounting evidence that post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), common among veterans returning from combat, may be associated with reduced cognitive function. Researchers are now looking at older veterans to see if PTSD increases the risk of developing dementia later in life…
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Soldiers’ emotional battle scars put doctors in dilemma July 24, 2009
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The suicide of an Iraq war veteran in Eastern Washington has highlighted an ethical dilemma confronting the Department of Veterans Affairs and the military: how far to go in protecting patient confidentiality as troubled veterans are called back to front-line duty.
Tim Juneman went to a Department of Veterans Affairs psychiatrist in January 2008 to talk about his recurrent thoughts of suicide.
The 25-year-old Washington State University student was an Iraq war veteran who had survived a year of tough fighting that left him with a twin diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and traumatic brain injury…
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52% percent of U.S. soldiers wounded in Iraq, Afghanistan diagnosed with TBI July 24, 2009
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WASHINGTON — Some 52 percent of soldiers severely injured in Iraq and Afghanistan who have come to the U.S. Army’s largest hospital for treatment have been diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries (TBI), an internal study has found.
The results of the study, carried out by Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center (DVBIC) at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, also showed a steep increase — from 33 percent — in TBI cases since the end of 2008.
Diagnoses of TBI are rising steadily as arrangements for TBI checks improve, while at the same time improvised explosive device (IED) attacks — the primary cause of TBI — in Afghanistan are intensifying, with 46 U.S. soldiers killed by the homemade bombs so far this year. Casualties from these attacks flow into Walter Reed, which provides treatment to badly wounded soldiers unavailable anywhere else.
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TBI Treatment July 24, 2009
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The Brain Injury Research Center (BIRC) in the UCLA Department of Neurosurgery has been awarded a $4.2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to research new ways to heal the brain after a traumatic brain injury (TBI). Specifically, researchers will be looking at how to best feed the brain the nutrients it needs to optimize recovery.
The standard thinking for many years has been that after a TBI, the brain lies in a docile state or coma and thus requires very little energy. But research from the BIRC now shows that the brain’s response to trauma requires enormous amounts of energy.
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Learning Independence At Camp T.B.I. July 24, 2009
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Augusta, GA—Lizzy Huskey is looking up and knows she’s got a long way to go. But she’s also got a lot of people cheering her on at Camp TBI.
“Camp TBI stands for camp To Be Independent. So normally, the TBI is Traumatic Brain Injury, but this week it’s To Be Independent,“ says Leslie Glass, Vice-President of Walton Foundation.
There are dozens of kids like Lizzy at Camp Twin Lakes in Rutledge, Georgia, this week. “They all have traumatic brain injuries, so they all have cognitive impairments. But many of them can get around just fine and walk and feed themselves. But many of them can’t do any of that, and they need help 24 hours a day,“ says Glass.
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Can Brains Be Saved? July 18, 2009
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by Lee Woodruff
September 6, 2008, was a clear-blue Indian summer day in Nebraska. Jennifer Ruth sat in the stands and watched her 12-year-old son, Derek, run with the football. She was unconcerned when he was tackled in a routine play. But as he fumbled the ball, she remembers seeing his right arm drop oddly, almost in slow motion. “He never does that” flickered through her mind. The coach noticed a glazed look on Derek’s face in the team huddle. He pulled him aside and asked him for the date, score, and his brothers’ names. Derek answered correctly. Then, minutes later, he screamed, “My head,” pulled off his helmet, and collapsed…
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TV Journalist Wounded in Iraq Returns to the War… July 18, 2009
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For the first time since he was seriously injured in Iraq in 2006, the ABC News correspondent Bob Woodruff returned to the war zone on Monday.
Mr. Woodruff, 47, who is perhaps the highest-profile member of the news media to be wounded in the six-year-long war, has sought to keep a spotlight on Iraq, and especially on the soldiers who experience traumatic brain injury and combat stress while on duty there. Mr. Woodruff said in an ABCNews.com blog post that he would be interviewing front-line doctors and nurses and viewing new equipment that is said to reduce injuries among the military forces in that country.
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The Risk of High School Football Tackles July 18, 2009
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Differences in height, weight and technique may make high school football tackles more risky to the head and spine than those that occur in college football, a new study shows.
The report, published by the National Athletic Trainers’ Association, analyzed the biomechanics of football tackles to better understand the high risk of concussions and serious cervical spine injuries faced by high school players.
The study, from researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, studied 35 high school varsity players who wore helmets equipped with sensors to measure the impact and force of tackles on the head and neck. During the 2007 football season, the researchers collected data from 68 sessions, including 55 practices and 13 games. They analyzed a total of 19,224 impacts and measured the intensity and duration of the impact, the linear and rotational acceleration (the speed at which the body or head moves after a hit), and the “jerk” or change in acceleration. The data were compared to similar studies of college football players…
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