In a study at the University of California, San Diego and VA San Diego Healthcare, researchers were able to regenerate “an astonishing degree” of axonal growth at the site of severe spinal cord injury in rats. Their research revealed that early stage neurons have the ability to survive and extend axons to form new, functional neuronal relays across an injury site in the adult central nervous system (CNS).
Mary E. Muscari, Ph.D, is an associate professor in the Decker School of Nursing at Binghamton University. She is a specialist in child health, mental health and forensics. Muscari uses her experience in pediatric, psychiatric and forensic nursing in both her clinical practice and her writing, particularly regarding victims and perpetrators of violence.
Close to 5.2 million adults experience post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) every year. In her latest book, What Nurses Know . . . PTSD, Binghamton University researcher, Mary Muscari, provides a holistic view of this potentially debilitating illness, providing PTSD sufferers and their friends and family with a better understanding of the disorder and what to do about it.
Expectant mothers who learn from prenatal diagnosis that they are carrying a fetus with a congenital heart defect (CHD) commonly suffer post-traumatic stress, depression and anxiety. However, a healthy relationship with one’s partner and positive coping mechanisms can reduce this intense stress, according to new research from the Cardiac Center of The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
According to a study in the Sept. issue of the Journal of the American College of Radiology, using a combination of the Internet and compact discs (CD) to transfer images during inter-hospital transfer is associated with much lower repeat imaging rates, suggesting that regional PACS networks may be useful for reducing cost and radiation exposure associated with trauma.
This special, single topic issue, which includes four guest editorials related to the 2010 revisions of the VA and DoD clinical practice guidelines for the management and treatment of post traumatic stress, also look at the guidelines from varying perspectives and provide some of the background and methodology considered in making the revisions.
A new report examines the risk factors for injuries to U.S. military personnel from crashes involving highly mobile multipurpose wheeled vehicles (HMMWVs), more commonly known as Humvees. According to the study, involvement in combat and serving as the vehicle’s operator or gunner posed the greatest risk for injury. It is the first published analysis of factors associated with Humvee injury risk in a deployed setting.
A large-scale review of national patient records reveals that although survival rates are the same, the cost of treating trauma patients in the western United States is 33 percent higher than the bill for treating similarly injured patients in the Northeast. Overall, treatment costs were lower in the Northeast than anywhere in the United States.
A Johns Hopkins review of more than 38,000 patient records finds that older adults who sustain substantial head trauma over a weekend are significantly more likely to die from their injuries than those similarly hurt and hospitalized Monday through Friday, even if their injuries are less severe and they have fewer other illnesses than their weekday counterparts.
As interest in concussion rates and prevention strategies at all levels continues to grow, one population that appears to have increasing head injury rates is collegiate football players. Research presented today at the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine’s (AOSSM) Annual Meeting in Baltimore highlights that the concussion rate in three college football programs has doubled in recent years.
Thumb and finger loss account for 32 percent of all reported injuries due to fireworks - imagining not being able to text for life is more potent than personal safety to today's generation, says Thomas Esposito, MD, trauma surgeon at Loyola's Level 1 trauma center.
Chicago is leading the nation in homicides and violence to the tune of an annual cost of $5.3 billion. Chicago's Loyola Level 1 trauma experts see the worst of the worst and explain the why's and solutions to the carnage.
One in eight people who suffer a heart attack or other acute coronary event experience clinically significant symptoms of PTSD, according to a meta-analysis of 24 studies. The study also shows that heart patients who suffer PTSD face twice the risk of having another cardiac event or of dying within one to three years, compared with those without PTSD.
Throughout the lifecycle, injury to the body’s cells occurs naturally, as well as through trauma. Cells have the ability to repair and regenerate themselves, but a defect in the repair process can lead to cardiovascular, neurological, muscular or pulmonary diseases. Recent discoveries of key genes that control cell repair have advanced the often painstaking search for ways to enhance the repair process. A new study by researchers from the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ)-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School reports that the protein MG53, previously shown to be the key initiator in the cell membrane repair process, has the potential to be used directly as a therapeutic approach to treating traumatic tissue damage. The research, published today, is featured on the cover of Science Translational Medicine.
The impact of traumatic injuries to the brain is a major topic for international migraine specialists at the 54th Annual Scientific Sessions of the American Headache Society, Los Angeles, June 20-24. This is among many timely issues concerning headache, migraine, and brain injuries on the conference's research presentation agenda.
Ongoing Purdue research into football players' brains bolsters one element of a lawsuit by former NFL players against the league: Repetitive blows increase the risk of long-term brain damage and cognitive decline.
Patients vary widely in their response to concussion, but scientists haven’t understood why. Now, using a new technique for analyzing data from brain imaging studies, researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University and Montefiore Medical Center have found that concussion victims have unique spatial patterns of brain abnormalities that change over time.
Warm weather increases car injuries including a fast growing trend of car surfing says Loyola trauma surgeon. Social media has increased the popularity of this risky sport popular with young males.
Vanderbilt University Medical Center saw perhaps its busiest weekend ever this Memorial Day holiday, with more than triple the volume of patients treated during a typical weekend.
Trauma Survivors Celebration is an annual event hosted by the Harris County Hospital District to honor the survivors of trauma and recognize their successful recoveries. These are victims of motor vehicle accidents, industrial injuries and crime that have received care at Ben Taub General Hospital or Lyndon B. Johnson General Hospital. The event reunites the former patients with physicians, nurses and EMS first-responders.
Many all-terrain vehicle (ATV) trails officially open over Memorial Day weekend. Doctors with the Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt are urging both adults and children to stay safe this riding season. Already this week in Middle Tennessee there have been multiple ATV accidents resulting in injuries and death.
In 1848, Phineas Gage survived an accident that drove an iron rod through his head. UCLA researchers, for the first time, used images of Gage’s skull combined with modern-day brain images to suggest there was extensive damage to the white matter “pathways” that connected various regions of his brain.
A new study suggests that head impacts experienced during contact sports such as football and hockey may worsen some college athletes’ ability to acquire new information. The research is published in the May 16, 2012, online issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
Nurses at Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s Level-1 Trauma Center are taking a pledge to raise awareness of the dangers associated with distracted driving. These caregivers, who treat hundreds of seriously injured patients each year due to distracted driving, want to see an end to behind-the-wheel activities taking attention away from the road.
Nearly 5 billion was absorbed by the non-riding public due to lack of helmet laws, and Michigan is now the 31st state to abandon helmet laws. Loyola trauma surgeon offers grim statistics on increase in fatalities, crashes when helmet laws are not in force.
Even mild head injuries can cause significant abnormalities in brain function that last for several days, which may explain the neurological symptoms experienced by some individuals who have experienced a head injury associated with sports, accidents or combat, according to a study by Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine researchers.
John J. Leddy, MD, associate professor and director of the University at Buffalo Concussion Clinic and Barry S. Willer, PhD, professor and the clinic’s research director consider the possibility that former NFL player, Junior Seau, found dead on May 2, may have been suffering from concussion-related depression.
Wrist, hand and finger trauma are the most common injuries presenting to emergency departments nationwide, yet only 7 percent of Tennessee hospitals have a hand specialist on call 24/7 to treat these patients, according to a Vanderbilt study published online today in the Annals of Plastic Surgery.
Virginia Tech released today the results of its 2012 rating for adult football helmets that is designed to assess a helmet’s ability to reduce the risk of concussion. A total of three helmets achieved a “5 star” mark, which is the highest rating awarded by the Virginia Tech Helmet Ratings™. In addition to the Riddell Revolution Speed, which was the only helmet to receive 5 stars last year, the Rawlings Quantum Plus and Riddell 360 also earned 5 stars as the best available helmets.
A national rise in public bike sharing programs could mean less air pollution and more exercise, an environmental and health win-win for people in the cities that host them, but according to researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, more than 80 percent of bike share riders are putting themselves at significant health risk by not wearing helmets.
A surgeon for WVU Healthcare has implanted a diaphragmatic pacemaker in a pediatric patient, making West Virginia University’s medical center only the second in the country to use this device on a young patient, after Case-Western Reserve University in Cleveland.
Thomas R. Terrell, MD presented “Prospective Cohort Study of the Association of Genetic Polymorphisms and Concussion Risk and Postconcussion Neurocognitive Deficits in College Athletes” at the 21st American Medical Society for Sports Medicine Annual Meeting in Atlanta, GA on April 23, 2012.
A new study suggests there may be a starting point at which blows to the head or other head trauma suffered in combat sports start to affect memory and thinking abilities and can lead to chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, in the brain. The research was released today and will be presented as part of the Emerging Science (formerly known as Late-Breaking Science) program at the American Academy of Neurology’s 64th Annual Meeting in New Orleans April 21 to April 28, 2012.
Seriously injured trauma patients transported to hospitals by helicopter are 16 percent more likely to survive than similarly injured patients brought in by ground ambulance, new Johns Hopkins research shows.
The American Association of Neurological Surgeons is commemorating National Neurosurgery Awareness Week (NNAW) April 15-21, 2012, in conjunction with its 80th Annual Scientific Meeting in Miami. NNAW efforts focus on the prevalence and prevention of concussions, urging athletes, coaches and the public to make concussion awareness part of their playbooks.
When Dr. Irene Gatti de Leon slipped on the ice and bumped her head, she wasn't too concerned. But two months later, she experienced weakness in her right leg and right arm, and was in imminent danger of suffering permanent disability similar to a stroke.
A traumatic brain injury can negatively affect a patient’s medical decision-making ability at a time when patients or their families must make myriad complex decisions, say researchers from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
The severity of the injury directly corresponds to the amount of impairment, according to findings. Patients with mild TBI showed little impairment one month after injury, while those with more severe injury were significantly impaired.
UCLA scientists have linked two genes to a higher risk of developing post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. The study suggests that PTSD susceptibility is inherited and could explain why some persons succumb to the disorder while others who suffered the same ordeal do not.
Reports of post-traumatic stress disorder among members of the U.S. military are raising questions about how this psychological disorder is diagnosed and treated. Psychologists can help explain how someone is diagnosed with PTSD and how service members are particularly affected by combat. They can also discuss how PTSD can pose serious mental health issues for service members, veterans and their families. The following experts are available for interviews on this topic.
Greater lifetime exposure to the stress of traumatic events was linked to higher levels of inflammation in a study of almost 1,000 patients with cardiovascular disease led by researchers at the San Francisco VA Medical Center and the University of California, San Francisco.
An peripheral nerve stimulation technique may be a valuable new approach for relief of severe neuropathic (nerve-related) pain in injured soldiers, reports an article in the March issue of Anesthesia & Analgesia, official journal of the International Anesthesia Research Society (IARS).
A new book by a University of New Hampshire researcher and Vietnam-era disabled veteran sheds new light on the long-term psychological trauma experienced by the coalition force in recent wars in the Gulf and Balkans that, when left untreated, can have deadly consequences.