Articles Posted in Brain Contusion

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40-year-old U.S. Representative Gabrielle “Gabby” Gifford’s announced plans to travel to Cape Canaveral to watch her NASA astronaut-husband Mark Kelly launch into space on the next Space Shuttle flight.

The Congresswoman is improving, but she is still recovering from a bullet wound to her left-cerebral hemisphere. She was shot in the head at point-blank range by 22-year-old community college student. The young man also killed six other people in the incident.

Her Suffolk doctor said, “Medically, there is no reason she could not travel safely to Florida to participate in this incredible event with her husband.”

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A community is in an uproar over plans to turn a derelict “eyesore” – property that used to be a filling station – into a specialized brain injury care unit. Residents of Staten island feel the new building will dominate their neighborhood as it would be the only two-story building in the community of bungalows.

A woman living next to the discarded lot spoke out at the meeting. “The site has been an eyesore too long and I don’t object to the idea of the brain injury clinic, but the size of the building would have to be in proportion with the bungalows on either side.”

Because of testimonies like this from the 25 community members who attended the meeting, the planning applications committee unanimously objected to the plans.

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Defendant, with his live-in partner, resided with a six year old ‘adopted’ daughter and his other ‘adopted’ 16-month old boy. Neither child has been legally adopted. On November 1, 1987, defendant scolded the six year old daughter for not drinking enough water and expressed annoyance with her. At approximately 6:00 p.m. of the same day, the girl went to into the bedroom to ask defendant if he would take her with him to a dinner engagement. Moments later, defendant carried the unconscious body of the daughter out of the bedroom. When the wife asked him what happened, defendant replied, “What’s the difference what happened. This is your child. Hasn’t this gone far enough?” The wife had no idea what defendant meant by this remark. Defendant handed the girl to defendant, who placed her on the bathroom floor. The child’s eyes were closed, she was unresponsive and she was not moving at all. Her breathing was raspy.

Defendant from The Bronx dressed for the dinner and went back home. Upon his return, the girl hasn’t regain her consciousness at all. The wife, believing that defendant has healing powers, urged him to heal the child. Instead, defendant and the wife took cocaine where defendant admitted he knocked the girl down because she stared defendant a lot. The next day, the child was still unconscious. Defendant tried to revive the girl and the wife called 911. The paramedics decided to bring the girl to a hospital where a tube was placed into her trachea to insure that air would go directly into her lungs.

The medical personnel observed that the girl’s body was covered with multiple bruises in various parts of her body, legs, knees and thighs. A neurological resident concluded that the child sustained brain injury due to pressing down of the brain stem causing subdural hematoma near her forehead. Over the course of the next few days, the girl’s condition did not improve and she was not responding to medical treatment. On November 4, she was declared brain dead. On November 5, the hospital removed the girl’s life support system and was pronounced dead.

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Sometimes the extent of moderate or severe damage caused by bTBI (explosive blast traumatic brain injury) is difficult to determine at first, doctors have told Lawyers. Severe facial trauma can prevent reliable neurological examination, especially when it comes to examining the pupils for reaction. Specialized tools are often necessary to even make triage decisions that could save lives.

The chaos of war only compounds the difficulty in making decisions when it comes to severe injury. When a doctor or other medical professional is used to medical centers in the United States, where there are adequate resources and help in the form of other professionals near at hand, it can be very difficult to work on a battlefield where everything is in short supply, but the number of patients is much greater.

Difficult decisions have to be made in such environments, doctors in Nassau and Suffolk have learned. It isn’t uncommon for a great number of severely injured patients to arrive at the same time. Efficient triage is essential for the best use of limited resources. There may be few health care providers, no operating rooms or CT scanners, and not many blood products to go around. It may even be impossible to evacuate patients to a better facility. The whole idea behind triage is take resources that may not be adequate and stretch them out to their best possible use to help the largest number of patients. They must be stabilized and their lives preserved until they can be evacuated into a better circumstance.

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The importance of the initial examination when it comes to closed head injury cannot be stressed enough, according to Manhattan doctors. The conscious level may be the best way for a clinician to assess brain function after a head injury. The level of consciousness is often tested early, as the medical professional tests the patient’s response to certain stimuli. Often, this assessment is taken before secondary brain injury sets in; if the injury seems to worsen, it may indicate there are problems with the brain that require a closer look. CT scanning helps with this process, but examination of the conscious level still remains a useful part of head injury observation, especially when the injury does not appear to be severe enough to require a scan at first impression.

The conscious level also helps to measure how serious the injury is, according to doctors. How conscious the patient is can help determine the extent of the injury, when coupled with how much time has passed since the impact. Other factors must be taken into account in these cases, however. Drugs, ethanol, lack of oxygen, and other factors can cause loss of consciousness, and these should also be ruled out.

Later evaluations can monitor and document the duration of loss of consciousness. This is yet another way to measure the severity of brain injury, studies have learned. These methods require away to measure impairments of consciousness, which fortunately medical professionals in Queens have had available for decades.

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It is important to learn more about brain injury so they might be better treated, Lawyers have determined. There are three major means researchers have used to learn more about such things: experimental, mathematical, and observational.

Many of the things people know about brain injury comes from experimental studies. Test subjects have included human cadavers, anesthetized animals, and animal cadavers. In some cases, physical models or computer models of heads can also be used. Experiments conducted on living humans are limited to non-injurious impact, of course.

When it comes to human cadavers, doctors have learned, there is representation of what happens to the general anatomy, but not to systems like the circulatory system, because the cadaver has no working organs. And animals differ enough from humans that beneficial details may be lost in such experiments.

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Blast TBI (traumatic brain injury) happens to many combatants. It can rightfully be considered a new class of TBI. While it might share a lot of features with standard TBI, it has some unique aspects that are all its own.

The milder forms of TBI can be very similar to PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), but it also has distinct aspects of its own. The military currently uses civilian standards of care for TBI when it comes to bTBI (explosive blast TBI), but they are constantly revising their standards to better provide for those injured on the field, according to doctors. The theater of war requires different standards of medical practice.

It is apparent that there need to be more studies done on the precise effects of bTBI, both scientifically and clinically. The research will have to be focused upon how explosive blasts can lead to TBI. It is also important to learn how prevalent this disease is, and the exact causes. Once the research in Staten Island and Westchester reaches a certain level, it will become much easier to diagnose and treat bTBI. A clinical definition of bTBI should quickly create the means to treat bTBI.

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The treatment and prevention of head injury has advanced a great deal over the past twenty years, doctors have discovered. Many lives have been saved by these medical advances. That does not mean, however, that head injury is still not a concern all over the world. There are still many head injuries, and they can cause a large number of differing problems. Head injury patients have specific difficulties when it comes to rehabilitation and reintegration into society.

It is important, according to studies, that information regarding the frequency, causes, and outcomes of head injury be collected, so these challenges can be better met. The data can be used to find ways to prevent head injuries before they even occur, or to minimize brain injury when they do occur. Such studies focus on entire populations, rather than individuals, allowing one to see trends that might otherwise be missed.

The problem with head injury is that it is not so easy to obtain, according to Lawyers. Such injuries can occur anywhere at any time. Depending upon the location, care might be difficult to come by, which means information on the injury is difficult to collect. Most countries as well as places like New York City and Queens make it mandatory to report both deaths and the causes of death, but some places do not standardize such information. Often, the information is incomplete, resulting in a bias in the information recorded, which makes it largely useless for a wide-ranging study of the causes and effects of head injury.

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A baby girl from Colorado Springs is fighting for her life and, according to a doctor, suffers irreversible brain damage. The mother and aunt of the child are accused of taping the child’s wrists, ankles, eyes and mouth with tape, leaving her in a running shower, and then falling asleep. They are charged with attempted murder, and their trial is set to proceed at the end of the month.

The child’s 19-year-old mother and 50-year-old aunt were present for the preliminary hearing that determined there was enough evidence to proceed with a criminal trial. Both women are charged with attempted first degree murder and child abuse. The mother is also charged with two counts of crime of violence, each of which carries a sentence of up to 48 years in prison. If found guilty, the young mother could spend the rest of her life in jail. The 20-month-old victim is still in the hospital.

After an emergency call stating that a toddler wasn’t breathing, officers responded and arrived at the 2400 block of Farragut Avenue in Colorado Springs. When paramedics got there, the small child was unconscious; she was immediately transported to Memorial Hospital with serious injuries.

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A 25-year-old man from Coon Rapids, Minnesota has been charged with assault and malicious punishment of a child. Prosecutors allege he shook his own five-month-old daughter, causing bleeding on her brain injury.

The baby was taken to Children’s Hospital in Minneapolis for treatment, sources told police. As for the suspect, he is in county jail, with his bail set at $100,000.

Police in Coon Rapids were called to Mercy Hospital to follow up on a report of a possible “shaken baby”. Medical staff had noted the baby had significant bleeding in her brain and was in cardiac arrest, but had been stabilized, thanks to hospital efforts.

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