Articles Posted in Traumatic Brain Damage

Published on:

by

Last month, the March of Dimes in NYC received more funding from the provincial government to help open the Acquired Brain Injury Congregate Care Home, a brain injury care home designed and being built to offer support and services for individuals living with brain injuries and their families.

Acquired brain injury is the result of a traumatic or non-traumatic event, which can produce temporary, prolonged, or permanent disability in cognitive, emotional, behavioral or physical functions.

The announcement said March of Dimes will get another $193,267, in addition to the $810, 000 already provided by the local province.

Continue reading

by
Published on:
Updated:
Published on:

by

A Pensacola, Florida, man is accused of violently pushing his 4-month-old son which caused the child to suffer a traumatic brain injury (TBI). Bond was set for the man at $150,000.

The 20-year-old father, of the 200 block of Marigold Drive was arrested and charged with three separate counts of aggravated child abuse.

As of late last week, he was still in the Escambia County Jail.

Continue reading

Published on:

by

A report issued by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in Long Island now states that if an appropriate dose of nutritional supplements is administered soon after an injury occurs, service members wounded on the battlefield have a much better outlook at recovering from a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). Nutrition apparently plays an even bigger role than previously though.

Commissioned by the Department of Defense (DoD), the report urges the military to make infusions, which contain calories and protein, a standard part of care in the immediate aftermath of a brain injury.

Accordingly, these findings also have implications in the civilian sector. “The investment the military makes will cross over into the civilian population for injuries suffered by those in car accidents, in motorbike accidents, by kids on soccer fields,” says the IOM panel chairman, professor emeritus of food science and human nutrition at the University of Illinois.

Continue reading

Published on:

by

The toll that concussions and traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) have on battlefields and sports’ fields is raising awareness and stirring up new ideas. TBIs affect more than 1 million Americans annually.

The single greatest challenge with a TBI case is the actual diagnosis. Many of the symptoms – dizziness, nausea, lack of focus – are also caused by other conditions. This makes it difficult for athletic trainers and medics to accurately take the step toward a proper diagnosis and treatment. Even brain-images taken after a concussion may not reveal mild brain damage, especially if there is no earlier image for the doctor to make a comparison with.

To help in that area, a team of doctors and engineers at the University of Pennsylvania has developed a “blast badge.” The patch-like item changes color within a set spectrum, and that color reflects the intensity of an explosion or impact.

Continue reading

Published on:

by

A Towanda resident, the vice president of the Pennsylvania Brain Injury Coalition, has spearheaded efforts at the Pennsylvania state Capitol in an effort to bring about increased awareness concerning brain injuries. His intention is to use the raised awareness to fight for legislation intended to prevent injuries and offer better medical treatment to those affected. 

A witness on the scene said, “As part of Tuesday’s rally and press conference, I had the great pleasure of meeting with the vice president and the Brain Injury Coalition and hearing about their ongoing efforts to prevent traumatic brain injuries and to seek better medical treatment. An advocacy effort of this kind takes a great deal of planning and forethought, [this man] did an admirable job in educating policymakers in both the House and the Senate of the need for brain injury legislation.”

The coalition is a proponent of the Safety in Sports Act, which is a continuation of previous years’ funding for community and home-based programs, a state level advisory board, and the inclusion of brain injury screenings for persons in state programs or facilities.

In Pennsylvania every year, there are roughly 156,000 concussions reported. A reporter can cite a recent study that found “15 percent of all high school football players reported concussion symptoms but only 47 percent of those players reported them to school or team officials.”

 Brain injuries in The Bronx and Broolkyn kill brain cells and disrupt neural pathways which affect the way a person thinks, feels, and acts. It is the leading cause of disability and death through the age of 40. Traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) as the name suggests are more severe and should be treated immediately.

Facts on brain injuries:

– 10 million Americans live with an acquired brain injury.

Continue reading

Published on:

by

In December, a grand jury handed down a third-degree burglary indictment for a 19-year-old young man and his 18-year-old friend in connection with an alleged burglary the previous summer.

The grand jury did not hand down any indictments on the man who allegedly put the 19-year-old in the choke hold that led to his brain injury.

According to the Somerset County Prosecutor, the Bridgewater Township Police responded to a fight report when they found two males lying on the roadway. The men were later identified as the young men mentioned above.

Continue reading

by
Published on:
Updated:
Published on:

by

Staff members in the employ of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) have become key advocates in the campaign to ensure health-care guarantees for Americans who suffer traumatic brain injuries (TBI). They are advocating that other citizens should be entitled to the same high quality care that the congresswoman is receiving in her recovery from a January shooting.

Last month, Giffords’ chief of staff released a letter urging Health and Human Services to prioritize defining the minimum package of “essential benefits” in the new health-care law that will be required of insurance plans for individuals and small businesses. This new law is expected to be operational by 2014.

Giffords’ Staff members are also planning to join encourage the Defense Secretary to expand the range of “cognitive rehabilitative therapies” that Tricare, the military’s insurance program for active-duty and retired service members, covers in cases of brain injury.

Continue reading

Published on:

by

State Representative Dewayne Bunch, also a Whitley County High School teacher, is improving. According to the public relations and marketing director for Shepherd Center in Atlanta, Georgia, the 49-year-old who sustained a head injury while trying to break-up a fight between two students in the school’s cafeteria, in April, is recovering nicely.

The teacher was transported to Baptist Regional Medical Center and then transferred to the University of Kentucky Medical Center. Two weeks after that, he was moved to the intensive care unit at Shepherd Center, a hospital specializing in the treatment of brain and spinal cord injuries.

The State Representative’s traumatic brain injury (TBI) has improved enough that he has now even been moved to the hospital’s rehabilitation unit.

His wife was quoted as giving thanks to the public. “I appreciate the outpouring of support and kindness we’ve received from the community. Please continue to keep [my husband] in your prayers as he continues his journey to recovery.”

More extensive details on his recovery and prognosis are not available at this time. Realizing how varied brain injuries can be, an Attorney, has said that his brain could be recovering from a minor hurt, or it could be trying to reconnect neurons after a serious injury left him with a damaged portion of his brain. While it is unclear what the extent of the TBI is, the fact that the teacher is going to rehabilitation is a good sign. The first periods immediately after a TBI are extremely important and rehab helps tremendously.

Continue reading

Published on:

by

Care for victims of traumatic brain injury (TBI) starts on the battlefield, according to “Guidelines for Field Management of Combat-Related Head Trauma”, doctors in Nassau and Suffolk have learned. The combat medic works hard to prevent further harm from coming to the victim. The basics, such as the ABCs of airway, breathing, and circulation are tended to before work on the actual injury begins.

Once the patient is stabilized, the severity of the injury is determined, which helps form the basis of triage decisions. Someone who is less injured can be evacuated to a better facility than a field hospital. Some of these need to be moved by helicopter or some other expeditious manner. A blast from something like an improvised explosive device (IED) often results in multiple injuries, which need to be managed all at once.

The combat support hospital is the place for a more detailed assessment of injuries. When it comes to blast trauma, neuroimaging with CT scans should be done as soon as possible. It is important to identify things like intracranial hemorrhage, skull fractures, or cerebral edemas before they develop into something worse. Often it is necessary to perform emergency neurosurgery, studies have discovered.

Continue reading

by
Published on:
Updated:
Published on:

by

The current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have led to a great many more serious injuries to United States service members. One of the most prevalent and dangerous is explosive blast traumatic brain injury (TBI). Doctors have been studying the rising trend.

There have been a number of military medical treatments for blast TBI which have been a success in the war theater, such as decompressive craniectomy, cerebral angiography, transcranial Doppler, hypertonic resuscitation fluids, and others. There has been similar progress stateside in neurosurgery, neuro-critical care, and rehabilitation for patients suffering injuries caused by blast TBI.

As they continue to treat these injuries, military physicians in Brooklyn and Long Island have been able to clinically categorize many types of blast TBI, according to studies. One of these important discoveries is the development of psuedoaneurysms and vasospasm in severe blast TBI victims, which can cause delayed decompensation. Another is that mild blast TBI often has very similar clinical features to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Some physicians have conclude that the injuries explosive trauma causes to the nervous system might be more complex than might appear at first examination.

Continue reading

Contact Information