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NAVY, MARINES AND U.C. SAN DIEGO JOIN BATTLE
AGAINST BRAIN INJURIES -- "We need to find
these people and treat them aggressively."
Researchers Mingxiong Huang (left)
and Roland Lee look over brain scans at their brain imaging lab at
UCSD. They are working on a pilot program sponsored by the Navy and
the Department of Veterans Affairs. (photo: BRUCE K. HUFF /
Union-Tribune) |
For more about traumatic brain injury, use the VA
Watchdog search engine...click here...
http://www.yourvabenefits.org/sessearch.php?q=traumatic+brain&op=ph
Story here...
http://www.signonsan
diego.com/news/military/20080509-9999-1n9brain.html
Story below:
-------------------------
Head trauma getting attention
Navy hospitals, Camp Pendleton, UCSD join battle against brain injuries
By Rick Rogers
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
Military officials are rolling out programs in the county and nationwide
to take on traumatic brain injuries, a signature casualty of the Iraq and
Afghanistan wars.
The projects are aimed at keeping hundreds of thousands of troops with
brain trauma, including roughly 720 a year at Camp Pendleton, from
slipping through the cracks. They reflect the armed forces' growing
recognition of a condition long overshadowed by another mental health
affliction – post traumatic stress disorder.
Combat zones are filled with ways to cause a traumatic brain injury,
commonly known as TBI. A roadside bomb throws a Marine's head against his
Humvee or shrapnel pierces a soldier's skull and damages brain tissue.
About one in every five troops who have served in Iraq or Afghanistan have
experienced a TBI, according to a major study released last month by the
Rand Corp. Nearly half of the military personnel have not sought diagnosis
or treatment, the report said.
Any day now, Camp Pendleton is expected to
officially open the Navy Medicine West Office of Neurotrauma on the base.
The center, which started operating in November, coordinates neurological
screening, treatment and follow-up care for troops from seven Marine bases
in California and Arizona.
In San Diego, Navy and Veterans Affairs officials have partnered with the
University of California San Diego to improve diagnosis of traumatic brain
injuries.
Last month, they signed an agreement to send designated service members to
UCSD Medical Center for brain testing with high-tech imaging methods.
And at three Navy hospitals in Southern California – Camp Pendleton Naval
Hospital, Bob Wilson Naval Hospital (formerly San Diego Naval Medical
Center) and Twentynine Palms Naval Hospital – officials are mounting a
two-front battle against TBIs.
They are working with chaplains, corpsmen and medical officers to spread
the message to troops about getting tested for brain injuries.
 They're
also building a regional traumatic brain injury registry to identify
patients, make sure they receive treatment and track their health on a
long-term basis.
“We need to find these people and treat them aggressively,” said Navy
Capt. Forrest Faison, commanding officer of the Camp Pendleton Naval
Hospital.
“If you look in Southern California, we are affected as much as anyone in
the country,” he said, especially Marines and sailors stationed at Camp
Pendleton and Twentynine Palms, and Seabees based at Port Hueneme in
Ventura County. These forces have served ground duty in Iraq and
Afghanistan.
The registry also is designed to increase communication between health
providers at different hospitals, Faison said. Joining him in the project
are Navy Capt. Mark Boman, commanding officer of the Twentynine Palms
Naval Hospital, and Rear Adm. Christine Hunter, who oversees the Bob
Wilson Naval Hospital.
At the national level, the Department of Defense also is paying more
attention to traumatic brain injuries.
It launched the Defense Center of Excellence for Psychological Health and
Traumatic Brain Injury in November in Rosslyn, Va. The center's director,
physician and Army Col. Loree Sutton, is visiting military bases and
hospitals across the country to raise awareness of TBIs.
In addition, the Pentagon gave a $4.6 million grant last month to the
nonprofit Brain Trauma Foundation in New York City. The group will try to
develop an eye-tracking device that can determine within seconds if a
person has suffered traumatic brain injuries.
The injuries, which can happen in combat or civilian settings, are caused
by a sudden and violent force to the brain. They alter a person's
consciousness.
Symptoms include headache, fatigue, deficient memory, vomiting, seizures,
slurred speech and poor coordination. They can last for hours or years,
depending on the severity of the injury.
An estimated 320,000 service members have suffered TBIs, the Rand study
reported. Pentagon officials have not said how many active-duty troops
suffer from traumatic brain injuries related to their service in Iraq or
Afghanistan. They have described the Rand findings as comprehensive and
generally accurate.
The full societal cost of a mild case of brain trauma can reach $32,000
per year, including treatment expenses, the patient's lost productivity
and the value of caregiving by family members, the Rand study said. The
annual figure for a moderate-to-severe case ranges from $268,000 to more
than $408,000.
Prompt diagnosis and treatment for traumatic brain injuries are vital
because the symptoms can worsen, mental health experts said. Affected
troops not only become safety risks – on the battlefield or back home –
but also can compromise their unit's combat readiness.
Some service members are reluctant to seek screening for traumatic brain
injuries because the symptoms often are not readily visible. Another
challenge is that the symptoms can resemble those of post traumatic stress
disorder, which remains a taboo topic among troops who view it as an
admission of unmanliness.
Trying to change those perceptions are workers at Camp Pendleton's Defense
and Veterans Brain Injury Center, which shares a building with the 1st
Marine Division's concussion clinic and mental-health offices.
The center's staff, which collaborates with the new Navy Medicine West
Office of Neurotrauma, encourages commanders and rank-and-file members of
each Marine unit to look for troops who exhibit symptoms of traumatic
brain injury.
On a recent day, center director Angela Drake diagnosed a lance corporal
wounded in an explosion. She timed his ability to place keys in a pegboard
with his good right hand and his scarred left hand. She wanted to gauge
whether the Marine's ailment was physical or neurological.
“Sometimes it is a concussion or PTSD. Many times they have both,” Drake
said. In this instance, it was physical.
Identifying certain cases of traumatic brain injury can be tricky because
without the right diagnostic equipment, the best health professionals
still can mistake traumatic brain injuries for strokes or post traumatic
stress disorder. Each condition requires a distinct path of treatment.
That's where the new partnership between the military and UCSD comes in.
Mingxiong Huang and Roland Lee, two researchers at the university, are
working on a pilot program sponsored by the Navy and the Department of
Veterans Affairs. The goal is to determine whether two advanced imaging
techniques – Magnetoencephalography, or MEG, and Diffusion Tensor Imaging
– can detect traumatic brain injuries better than other methods.
Huang said 70 percent of traumatic brain injuries are missed by Magnetic
Resonance Imaging, or MRI, the most common procedure used for finding such
injuries.
Early research shows that damaged areas of the brain appear on MEG scans
as having slower-than-normal brain waves, while Diffusion Tensor Imaging
records those areas as black holes or as frayed or weakened fibers.
The imaging helps doctors distinguish brain trauma from post traumatic
stress disorder because slower brain waves are not characteristic of PTSD.
“It's going to be a very important study,” Drake said. “The new technology
is much more able to see very small changes.”
-------------------------
posted by Larry
Scott
Founder and Editor
VA Watchdog dot Org
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