Category Archives: Brain Injury Treatment

Winston-Salem, NC (PRWEB) October 11, 2013 Each year, U.S. emergency departments treat an estimated 173,285 sports- and recreation-related traumatic brain injuries, including concussions, among children and adolescents from birth to 19 years old, which equals almost 20 injured children every hour.* A concussion is a brain injury and all are serious, with most concussions occurring without loss of consciousness. Recognition and proper treatment can help prevent further injury or even death. Researchers recently found that contact in practice, not games, was the most significant variable when the number and force of head impacts in youth football players were measured over the course of a season. They concluded that less contact during practice could mean a lot less exposure to head injuries for young football players. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 62% of sports-related injuries occur during practice rather than in games. Learn more about the signs of concussions by viewing http://www.wakehealth.edu/CIPT/Awareness/Concussion-Facts.htm. In addition to funding research that studies the number of head impacts children experience while playing sports, our larger goal is to improve detection of and treatment for these head injuries, said Dr. J. Wayne Meredith, executive director of the Childress Institute for Pediatric Trauma, … Continue reading →

Public release date: 10-Oct-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ] Contact: Kayee Ip ip@aaos.org 847-384-4035 American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons ROSEMONT, Ill.In the United States, approximately 1.4 million people suffer a traumatic brain injury (TBI) each year. Of those injuries, three out of four are minor TBI (mTBI)a head injury that causes a temporary change in mental status including confusion, an altered level of consciousness, or perceptual or behavioral impairments. According to a literature review appearing in the October 2013 issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (JAAOS), falls and motor vehicle accidents are responsible for most cases of mTBI and also are a common cause of bone and joint injuries. "Musculoskeletal injuries are often seen concurrently with some studies estimating that 50 percent of patients with orthopaedic injuries also sustain a mTBI," says lead study author Richard L. Uhl, MD, an orthopaedic surgeon at Albany Medical Center in Albany, N.Y. Approximately 80 percent of patients who sustain a mTBI can be safely discharged from the emergency department and will fully recover and return to their baseline mental status. However, mTBI often goes undiagnosed initially because symptoms do not appear until the patient resumes everyday life. … Continue reading →

BERWYN, Pa.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- QR Pharma, Inc. (QR) is a clinical-stage specialty pharmaceutical company committed to developing therapeutics with novel approaches for the treatment of cognitive impairment after acute brain injury like concussions, head trauma and stroke or in chronic degeneration like Alzheimers and Parkinsons disease. QR and the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) announce today they received a US Army grant in the amount of $3,000,000 to study Posiphen in two models of traumatic brain injury (TBI). We are extremely pleased to receive this funding from the USARMY, said Maria Maccecchini, PhD, CEO of QR Pharma. It enables us to continue our work with traumatic brain injury and hopefully stop the neurological damage that is the consequence of these devastating injuries. It also provides the resources necessary to progress our drug development and validates the scientific approach we have taken. Our collaborators Drs. Marie-Francoise Chesselet and David Hovda at UCLA have used TBI injury models to study brain trauma. Their models produce cognitive impairment, as assessed in the Morris Water Maze, and increase expression of tau, p-tau, APP, A and alpha-synuclein in the brain. Professor Marie-Francoise Chesselet, PhD, is Chair of the Department of Neurobiology in the David Geffen … Continue reading →

QR Pharma is a five-year-old start-up company based in Berwyn, but the young firm has been able to connect with well-known people and groups as it seeks funding to make drugs to treat Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. In 2012, QR Pharma got $468,000 from the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research to explore a compound called Posiphen as a potential treatment for Parkinson's. This grant is for work that will be led by Robert Nussbaum of the University of California, San Francisco, and Jack T. Rogers, an associate professor of psychiatry at the genetics and aging research unit of Massachusetts General Hospital. QR Pharma announced Tuesday that it received $3 million from the Army to study Posiphen as a treatment for traumatic brain injury. This grant is to study the medication in mice in two different trials, and will be conducted in conjunction with the University of California, Los Angeles. The UCLA doctors involved are Marie-Francoise Chesselet, chairwoman of the neurobiology department at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, and David Hovda, who has been honored by the Army for his work in developing ways to treat TBI. The Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center tracks service … Continue reading →

As an attorney representing car accident victims with traumatic brain injury, I often tell people that many brain injuries, including concussions, will heal and that many people can definitely go on to lead normal, productive lives. But Some cant. Unfortunately, theres an unlucky percentage of people with brain injuries and concussions whose symptoms dont resolve and who dont get better. This creates tremendous problems for them functioning in society. Closely connected with this is the problem of how many of these people with concussion injuries are treated by many doctors unfamiliar with TBI. Ive previously written about the societal cost of traumatic brain injury when TBI and concussion are not properly diagnosed. The key difference between an injury to the brain, and an injury to the body is that brain injury is a process, not an event. Dr. Brent Masel makes this point quite clearly in his excellent article on traumatic brain injury. In fact, brain injury symptoms can often, get worse, intensify, change and evolve over time into new symptoms for the unlucky person with a brain injury or concussion. A doctor quoted in a recent article on American Medical News: More brain injury awareness needed to curb concussions, … Continue reading →

If all goes as planned, a brain scan will soon become as routine for many University of New Mexico athletes as an annual physical checkup. UNM and the nonprofit organization Mind Research Network on Wednesday announced a concussion-assessment project called Brain Safe that will regularly look inside the brains of more than 200 Lobos with magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI. The athletes will receive MRIs at the beginning of every season and after any serious sport-related injuries. The program is already under way, with initial scans taken this fall of some football players, female volleyball players, and male and female soccer and basketball players. The goal is to learn more about the long-term effects of brain injuries suffered by athletes in contact sports by comparing images taken over a period of time and eventually minimizing the impact of concussions. Our top concern is the safety of our athletes, UNM athletic director Paul Krebs said. This is one more tool for our team doctors to use to make sure that when we return a student-athlete to play, we are making that decision based on the very best medical information available. The sometimes deadly long-term effects of concussions, particularly repeat concussions, has … Continue reading →

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina Before doctors drilled through President Cristina Fernandez's skull Tuesday to remove a blood clot pressuring her brain, her vice president sought to reassure Argentines they have no reason to be alarmed. Yet the government is facing a number of challenges, and many people are worried by the country's dominant political force being sidelined. When Fernandez came out of surgery, her spokesman said that she was in good spirits, that doctors were satisfied with the operation, and that she was already recovering well. Vice President Amado Boudou already had urged the country to stay upbeat. "This is nothing new, and doesn't generate any uncertainty," he said as he took charge of the government for an undetermined period. But many Argentines have doubts: Congressional elections in less than three weeks are threatening to weaken the governing party's strength, Monday's U.S. Supreme Court rejection of an Argentine appeal makes another debt default more likely, the economy has slowed sharply, and Boudou is under investigation for corruption. "This is no time to go on automatic pilot," economist Jorge Todesca said in a letter to his clients. He said Fernandez has run the government like an "anarchy" characterized by spontaneous acts, short-term … Continue reading →

Public release date: 8-Oct-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ] Contact: Jo Ann M. Eliason jaeliason@thejns.org 434-982-1209 Journal of Neurosurgery Publishing Group Charlottesville, VA (October 8, 2013). Researchers found a significant reduction in the number of deaths of patients hospitalized in New York State with severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) between 2001 and 2009. The Brain Trauma Foundation, in collaboration with the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, published the first edition of the "Guidelines for Management of Severe Traumatic Brain Injury" in 1986. Data from 22 trauma centers in New York State were studied by researchers from Weill Cornell Medical College, the Brain Trauma Foundation, and Jamaica Hospital Medical Center in New York, and Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, Oregon. The reduction in deaths at the trauma centers between 2001 and 2009 corresponded to increased adherence to tenets of the Guidelines, particularly recommendations on monitoring of brain pressure and management of brain perfusion pressure. Detailed findings of this study are reported and discussed in "Marked reduction in mortality in patients with severe traumatic brain injury. Clinical article," by Linda M. Gerber, Ph.D., Ya-Lin Chiu, M.S., Nancy Carney, Ph.D., Roger Hrtl, M.D., and Jamshid Ghajar, M.D., Ph.D., published today … Continue reading →

Oct. 8, 2013 Researchers found a significant reduction in the number of deaths of patients hospitalized in New York State with severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) between 2001 and 2009. The Brain Trauma Foundation, in collaboration with the American Association of Neurological Surgeons, published the first edition of the "Guidelines for Management of Severe Traumatic Brain Injury" in 1986. Data from 22 trauma centers in New York State were studied by researchers from Weill Cornell Medical College, the Brain Trauma Foundation, and Jamaica Hospital Medical Center in New York, and Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, Oregon. The reduction in deaths at the trauma centers between 2001 and 2009 corresponded to increased adherence to tenets of the Guidelines, particularly recommendations on monitoring of brain pressure and management of brain perfusion pressure. Detailed findings of this study are reported and discussed in "Marked reduction in mortality in patients with severe traumatic brain injury. Clinical article," by Linda M. Gerber, Ph.D., Ya-Lin Chiu, M.S., Nancy Carney, Ph.D., Roger Hrtl, M.D., and Jamshid Ghajar, M.D., Ph.D., published today online, ahead of print, in the Journal of Neurosurgery. As part of a quality improvement initiative supported by the New York State Department of … Continue reading →

The Brain Injury Alliance of Montana will host its annual brain conference Crossing Thresholds on Friday and Saturday at the Billings Hotel and Convention Center. The conference will feature keynote speaker, Larry Pray, a brain injury survivor by stroke and practicing pastor. There'll also be sessions on Behavior Therapy, Medicaid for workers with disabilities, 504s and IEPs, Healing with Arts and Recovery, Hyperbaric Oxygen Treatment of Brain Injury and Ask a Neurologist. The conference is ideal for professionals, physicians, brain injury survivors, families affected by brain injury and children. Download registration formsfrom the Brain Injury Alliance of Montanas website at http://www.biamt.org. The conferenceis $35 per day for members of the Brain Injury Alliance of Montana and $55 per day for nonmembers. Registration for Friday includes dinner and entertainment with Scott Cossu, pianist and composer, from 5:30 to 8p.m. For more information on how to register, call 1-800-241-6442 or e-mail molly@biamt.org. The Brain Injury Alliance of Montana is a statewide nonprofit organization creating a better future through brain injury prevention, research, education and advocacy. Continue reading here: Brain Injury Alliance conference begins Friday … Continue reading →