In a new report issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the CDC reported that suicide is the top cause of deaths tied to traumatic brain injury. The CDC reported there were 61,000 traumatic brain injury linked deaths in 2017 and that nearly half of these deaths were caused by suicide.
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mTBI Recovery: The First Year will be Expensive
Experts hired in defense of mild traumatic brain injury claims often allege that mild traumatic brain injury recovery is uneventful in 6 to 12 months. Hearing a defendant’s courtroom doctor testify could lead one to believe that mild traumatic brain injuries are relatively benign and minor.
A new study published in Brain Injury sheds light on the high costs and health-care resources utilized in the first 12 months following a mTBI.
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Real Recovery Time for mTBI: New Study Concludes Difficulties at 1 Year Post-mTBI are Common
A new study published in JAMA Neurology further debunks the myth often heard by defense doctors in litigation: everyone recovers from an mTBI within 6 to 8 weeks.
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Cognitive Reserve and Age Predict Cognitive Recovery after Traumatic Brain Injury
Researchers from Melbourne, Australia looked at cognitive reserve and age as factors to predict the cognitive recovery after a mild to severe traumatic brain injury. Recognizing that the persistence of injury-related cognitive impairments can have devastating consequences after traumatic brain injury, the researchers undertook a longitudinal study to examine the long-term cognitive recovery in 109 adults (71% male) experiencing complicated mild-to-severe traumatic brain injury in association with age, pre-mobid intelligence and injury severity (measured by post traumatic amnesia duration).
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Another Win for Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI)
A Superior Court of Washington for King County recently upheld the admissibility of diffusion tensor imaging.
In Peach v. RLI Insurance Company, defendants moved to exclude the testimony of Dr. Cyrus Raji and related testimony regarding the admissibility of diffusion tensor imaging. Defendants produced the affidavit of Dean Shibata, M.D. In deciding the motion, utilizing a Frye standard, the Court found as follows:
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Study Finds that Cognitive Impact can Persist in Young Adults with Concussions
A new study published in the European Journal of Neuroscience has found that young adults with a history of mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), or concussions, can experience persistent cognitive changes as well as altered brain activity.
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Reexamining the Standardized Assessment of Concussion
In the mid-1990s, the Standardized Assessment of Concussion (SAC) was discovered to assess minor brain injuries. The SAC assessments consisted of orientation to time, day, and date, immediate recall, concentration, and detailed recall. SAC screening became a popular tool for various sports to determine a person’s head injury. Recognizing a mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) or concussion is crucial, and although mTBI/concussions are common, there is no specific diagnostic tool to determine the severity of the injury.
The SAC assessments soon created the Sports Concussion Assessment Tool (SCAT). After, the Department of Defense created their version of a SAC assessment called the Military Acute Concussion Evaluation (MACE). All three assessments became useful for their practices and helpful tools for non-sport related mTBI, but have resulted to have mixed results.
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Does the Current Trauma Triage Scale Need to Be Updated?
On average, the 13-point Glasgow Coma Scale, otherwise known as GCS, is a routine part of the trauma triage on a worldwide level. GCS is a neurological scale created with the goal to provide a way of recording the conscious state of a person and their overall assessment. However, a recent study has found there may be simpler and more efficient methods to determine a patient’s consciousness.
A study published in the Annals of Emergency Medicine entitled “A Two-Center Validation of ‘Patient Does Not Follow Commands’ and Three Other Simplified Measures to Replace the Glasgow Coma Scale for Field Trauma Triage,” which analyzed trauma center registries in California and Colorado and ranged from 2003 to 2015. Nearly 50,000 trauma patients were analyzed.
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The Link Between Traumatic Brain Injuries and Dementia
The New York Times recently published an article detailing a new study which examined people suffering from traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) and found an increased likelihood in developing dementia. The risk of developing dementia was highest in those who had suffered multiple TBIs, but even those who suffered from a single mild TBI were still at an increased risk of dementia.
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Increased Risk of Multiple Sclerosis After Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)
I often am contacted by individuals who have sustained traumatic brain injury (TBI) and have later been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS). Many have asked me if their multiple sclerosis diagnosis was caused by their earlier trauma. Previously, most research I had read indicates that there is no causal relationship between MS and TBI.
However, I recently came across an interesting article published in January 2012 entitled “Increased Risk of Multiple Sclerosis after Traumatic Brain injury: A Nationwide Population-Based Study.”
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