By Bill Briggs, NBC News contributor After a decade of war,America is well schooled on post-traumatic stress, lost limbs and traumatic brain injury, but the most common injury sustained by U.S. troops is literally a silent wound: hearing loss. Mark Brogan, a retired Army captain, can speak quite personally about almost all of those examples of combat carnage he suffered a brain injury, a spinal injury and a nearly severed right arm when a suicide bomber on foot detonated his weapon near Brogan six year ago in Iraq. Courtesy of Mark Brogan Mark Brogan sustained a spinal injury, a brain injury, a nearly severed arm - and severe hearing loss - when a suicide bomber blew himself up not far from Brogan in Iraq six years ago. What does Brogan, 32, consider the worst of the physical trauma? Hearing loss and the brain injury, he said from his home in Knoxville, Tenn. He has profound unusable hearing in his right ear and severe hearing loss in his left, he said, along with constant ringing, or tinnitus, in his ears. After the insurgent's bomb killed a soldier just behind Brogan along with the person who was wearing the device other U.S. … Continue reading →

The explosive blast that forever changed Vanessa Molinas life struck on a desolate road in Iraq in 2006 as she drove a gun truck guarding a supply convoy. Molina, 30, described the roadside bomb blast as a big, bright orange light that just lasted forever. The force knocked her 2 1/2-ton truck off the road, tore away the drivers-side door and cracked Molinas protective eyewear. The blast was horrible, she recalled. Thats what scares me, the force of that device that much power. A U.S. Army Reserve staff sergeant with the 281st Transportation Company based in Las Cruces, Molina struggles with depression and memory problems that she now recognizes as symptoms of traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder. Molina is one of 2,461 veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars treated for PTSD at the New Mexico VA Health Care System between Oct. 1, 2001, and June 30, 2012, according to a report issued last month by the Department of Veterans Affairs. The report found that nearly 30 percent of the 834,463 veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars treated at VA hospitals and clinics nationwide have been diagnosed with PTSD. Immediately after the bomb attack, a commander asked … Continue reading →

ScienceDaily (Nov. 13, 2012) The average incidence of traumatic brain injury (TBI) among service members deployed in Middle East conflict zones has increased 117% in recent years, mainly due to proximity to explosive blasts. Therapeutic exposure to a high oxygen environment was hoped to minimize the concussion symptoms resulting from mild TBI, but hyperbaric oxygen (HBO2) treatment may not offer significant advantages, according to an article in Journal of Neurotrauma, a peer-reviewed journal from Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers. The article is available free on the Journal of Neurotrauma website at http://www.liebertpub.com/neu. A prospective trial conducted at the U.S. Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine evaluated the benefits of HBO2 therapy on post-concussion symptoms in 50 military servicepersons who had suffered at least one combat-related mild TBI. The study, "The Effect of Hyperbaric Oxygen on Symptoms Following Mild Traumatic Brain Injury," compared the results following 30 sessions of either HBO2 (2.4 atmospheres absolute pressure) or sham treatment over an 8-week period. George Wolf, MD and Leonardo Profenna, MD, U.S. Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine (San Antonio, TX), David Cifu, MD and William Carne, PhD, Virginia Commonwealth University (Richmond), and Laura Baugh, MD, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences … Continue reading →

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 14, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- The first treatment breakthrough of its kind for survivors of traumatic brain injury (TBI) or stroke will be published in the December 1 issue of the journal CNS Drugs[1], with an accompanying editorial[2]. To view the multimedia assets associated with this release, please click http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/first-effective-treatment-for-traumatic-brain-injury-reported-by-institute-of-neurological-recovery-even-years-after-injury-179121491.html The ground-breaking study provides clinical evidence that, for the first time, chronic neurological dysfunction from stroke or traumatic brain injury can rapidly improve following a single dose of a drug that targets brain inflammation, even years after the initial event. There are 5 million people living in the U.S. after TBI and 4.5 million living in the U.S. after stroke, and this is the first treatment of its kind ever available for TBI or stroke survivors after hospital discharge. The observational study[1] of 629 patients, conducted over the course of nearly two years, documents a diverse range of positive effects, including statistically significant rapid clinical improvement in motor impairment, spasticity, cognition, etc. in the stroke group, with a similar pattern of improvement seen in the traumatic brain injury (TBI) group. The study involved 617 patients treated an average of 42 months after stroke and 12 patients treated an … Continue reading →