Brain injury budget faces cut, Military research, treatment at risk

[Rose Siding]

Brain injuries are so common among U.S. troops that they're called the signature injury of the Iraq war, but Congress is poised to cut military spending on researching and treating them.

House and Senate versions of the defense appropriation bill would chop funding for the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center from $14 million to $7 million. The center runs 10 facilities across the country, including one at Fort Bragg that has performed research and treated soldiers' injuries since 1998.

"It's just ridiculous," said Sgt. Maj. Colin Rich, a Fort Bragg soldier who has been legally blind since he was shot in the head while serving in Afghanistan in 2002. "Whoever is cutting the budget must have a head injury themselves."

"With the bombs, the gunshot wounds and everything else, their plate is full," he said. "They need that money."
...
The brain injury center's headquarters are at Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington. Its leaders had sought $19 million for the coming year, citing the growing number of patients, the cost of long-term care and the need for research to improve treatment and prevention.

http://www.newsobserver.com/110/story/480210.html

[whistle]

1. Who in congress is poised to cut military spending on researching...

...and treating brain injuries? These representatives need to be identified by name and drummed out this November election.

[w4rma]

3. Bush's budget does, and the Republicans who support Bush's budget. (nt)

[zreosumgame]

5. and ones like Lieberman too

since he supports dumbaya

[UpInArms]

2. Lack of Brains in US Leadership is Biggest Problem

(re-wording of headline needed)



Brain injuries high among Iraq casualties

WASHINGTON (Army News Service, Nov. 24, 2003) -- U.S. casualties in Iraq may be suffering a greater share of brain injuries than in previous wars, causing concern among military doctors.

Doctors with the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center at Walter Reed Army Medical Center say early casualty assessments suggest service members are returning with a wide range of brain injuries — from mild concussions to coma or death — in larger percentages than the military's rule of thumb.

This suspected rise in an injury notoriously debilitating to victims and hard for doctors to diagnose may result from the terrorists' explosive arsenal and vulnerabilities in current U.S. combat gear, according to experts.

"It's always been well known there are going to be brain injuries in combat," said Dr. Louis French, a neuropsychologist and assistant director for clinical services at the brain center. "About 20 percent is usually what's talked about. So far, what we've seen suggests a higher percentage."

Among 105 casualties assessed between June and October, doctors discovered about two-thirds, or 67 percent, to have brain injuries, according to Dr. Laurie Ryan, another neuropsychologist and the assistant director for research.

...more...

Key Iraq wound: Brain trauma

Posted 3/3/2005 11:12 PM

By Gregg Zoroya, USA TODAY
A growing number of U.S. troops whose body armor helped them survive bomb and rocket attacks are suffering brain damage as a result of the blasts. It's a type of injury some military doctors say has become the signature wound of the Iraq war.

Known as traumatic brain injury, or TBI, the wound is of the sort that many soldiers in previous wars never lived long enough to suffer. The explosions often cause brain damage similar to "shaken-baby syndrome," says Warren Lux, a neurologist at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.

"You've got great body armor on, and you don't die," says Louis French, a neuropsychologist at Walter Reed. "But there's a whole other set of possible consequences. It's sort of like when they started putting airbags in cars and started seeing all these orthopedic injuries." (Related item: TBI gallery)

<snip>

From January 2003 to this January, 437 cases of TBI were diagnosed among wounded soldiers at the Army hospital, Lux says. Slightly more than half had permanent brain damage. Similar TBI screening began in August at National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., near Washington. It showed 83% — or 97 wounded Marines and sailors — with temporary or permanent brain damage. Forty-seven cases of moderate to severe TBI were identified earlier in the year.

...more...



Casualty of War
Damaged brains are emerging as the singular injury of the Iraq conflict. A soldier’s story.

March 17, 2006 - Sam Reyes remembers nothing of the suicide bomb attack on a highway outside Fallujah that nearly killed him on the morning of Sept. 6, 2004. Perhaps it's just as well. When medics arrived at the site of the attack, which left 12 Marines dead, they found Reyes sprawled on the road in desperate condition: his arms, back and head were pierced by shrapnel; his left arm was ripped open to the muscle; his stomach and spleen had been sliced; his ribs were broken, his face was badly burned and his tongue had been cut in half.

In the helicopter on the way to a military hospital in Baghdad, the medical team had to defibrillate his heart to keep him alive. Over the next 18 months, during an agonizing recovery, the young Marine gunner underwent several operations and lost 45 pounds. Although his physical wounds have largely healed—save for scattered scars across his forehead and his sense of taste, which has yet to return—the bomb blast left Reyes, now 21, with a less visible, but devastating injury to his brain. Like many Iraq vets who survive the concussive force of an improvised explosive device, or IED, Reyes is now sometimes unable to recognize his friends or family, to recall what he just read or heard, to concentrate or to read faster than the average second-grader. " I feel kind of odd when I see people and they say, 'Oh, you don't remember me'," says Reyes. "And I say, 'No, I don't.' They'll say, 'Remember, we did this and that when we were younger.' And I go, 'Oh, yeah.' It kind of makes me feel bad."

Like more than 1,700 military personnel wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan in recent years, Marine Cpl. Samuel Reyes Jr. is suffering from traumatic brain injury, known in military jargon as TBI, which leaves survivors unable to perform the most basic cognitive functions. According to officials at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, TBI affects more than 25 percent of bomb-blast survivors like Sam Reyes, making it the signature injury of the Iraq war. In fact, military officials say that were it not for advances in body armor, helmets and drastically improved battlefield medicine, the majority of survivors being treated for TBI would not have even survived their injuries as recently as the first gulf war 15 years ago. The increasing number of TBI survivors and the vexing limitations they face has become an enormous challenge for both military medicine and for the Department of Veterans Affairs, which will treat these survivors for life. "In the military, the question is 'are you battle ready?'" says Dr. Harriet Zeiner, a clinical neuropsychologist for the VA in Palo Alto, Calif., where Reyes is being treated. "Our criteria at the VA , are you going to be able to hold down a job, sustain a relationship, get married, have kids or do you have something that's going to impair you?"

...more...

[acmejack]

4. I wasn't sure if you aware of the relative age of this story?

Posted 8/8/2006 10:01 PM ET

Center for war-related brain injuries faces budget cut

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-08-08-brain-center_x.htm

[Monkeyman]

6. Larry Scott has been all over this

50% cut in research is a slap in the face to kids who served in Iraq

http://www.vawatchdog.org

[brer cat]

7. Will this fit on a yellow "support your troops" ribbon?

Thanks for posting, Rose Siding. I had missed this earlier.