Category Archives: Brain Injuries

March is Brain Injury Awareness month, sponsored by the national Brain Injury Association of America. We are therefore continuing our ongoing discussions of how brain injuries are affecting individuals all throughout the country. Traumatic brain injury may be the signature injury of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The Brain Trauma Foundation has estimated that between 10 to 20 percent of all soldiers serving overseas suffer from TBI, although many have not yet been diagnosed. Among the known wounded soldiers, the TBI rate is 33 percent. The leading causes of TBI in the military are blasts, fragments, bullets, motor vehicle crashes and falls. TBI in the military has most recently made headlines when a U.S. soldier left his base at night and killed 16 civilians in their homes. Experts have been projecting mental illness caused by the man’s brain injury may have played a role in the massacre. The staff sergeant…
Read More »

Posted in Brain Injuries | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

March is Brain Injury Awareness Month, sponsored by the Brain Institute Association of America. This national, non-profit organization seeks to increase awareness and research funding for brain injury survivors through advocacy, education and legislative action. With this in mind, our blog will be discussing brain injuries for the rest of the week. A new report published by the New England Journal of Medicine finds that prescription medication used to treat Parkinson’s disease may have a beneficial therapeutic effect on individuals living with traumatic brain injury, also known as TBI. The drug, amantadine hydrocholoride, as been involved in small-scale brain injury studies before with promising results, but nothing definitive. The new study tested the drug by dividing TBI survivors into two groups: the control group who received a placebo pill, and the experimental group, given one or two doses of amantadine hydrocholoride. Each group contained individuals with similar severity of TBI…
Read More »

Posted in Brain Injuries | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Erb’s palsy is a birth injury caused by nerve damage to a newborn’s brachial plexus, and it can result in the child having a life-long disability with little or no use of the affected arm. During labor, a baby may have a shoulder wedged in the birth canal, and doctors and nurses are specifically trained in how to deal with such delicate situations. If the medical professional pulls the baby’s neck in a certain manner, it will damage the nerves in the neck and the child will have Erb’s palsy. This is a form of medical malpractice as it is preventable under standard medical practices. A group of obstetricians in New York attempted to rewrite the law on Erb’s palsy medical malpractice. As a defense to an Erb’s palsy lawsuit, the group tried to claim the disorder is solely caused by “natural forces of labor,” and not doctor error. This…
Read More »

Posted in Brain Injuries | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment