(via Joe Martin) Why is there such a disconnect between medical and even neurological experts over the diagnosis of brain injuries? Because most of what we know about brain injuries has been discovered since 2009. Most practitioners who see TBI patients were trained before any of these discoveries were made. Most medico-legal literature on brain injury, that is still a primary basis for legal determinations of disability are based on research prior to 2000. No scanning methods exist that can detect the most common damage that occurs in traumatic brain injuries. It takes microscopic examination of brain tissue to detect the damage. This video describes how the discovery was made that serious brain damage can exist with no apparent evidence, even with post-mortem examination of brain tissue, until that tissue is examined under a microscope, and it describes the extreme resistance of the medical community to this evidence. It has taken several years since 2009 for this new paradigm to begin to be accepted. This widespread desire to deny the existence of serious injury in the absence of visible (or detectable) evidence has been a continuing obstacle for survivors to overcome. In WWI, thousands of British soldiers with symptoms of traumatic brain injuries were convicted of cowardice and were sentenced to death by firing squad. In the US, these victims were usually not sentenced to death, but many served prison sentences and were later released, unable to work, to become indigents. Over the years, treatment of brain-injured soldiers has improved, but even today, soldiers are returned to active duty with severely impaired judgement and reaction times, and those who cannot return to duty face strong resistance to any kind of admission that their injuries are real. There had been hope that new blood tests for markers of brain damage that not only could identify the existence of damage, but could date the damage and even locate the damage might be possible, but the latest research indicates there are too many situations in which that evidence is not consistently present, or is often contaminated by circumstances of the injury. It appears the best prediction of brain injury is the result of triangulating results of a cat scan, with tests for blood markers, and comparison of processing speed against a baseline already recorded in medical records before the accident. Since much of the microscopic damage that happens as a result of brain injuries happens after the impact during the first two weeks, there are some promising possibilities for future standard ER and post accident treatments that could prevent much of this damage from happening. youtu.be/bzMBY59Fn20
Posted on: Thu, 15 Jan 2015 06:26:03 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015