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The Brain Injury Assocation has posted the folllowing Legislative Update:

Brain Injury Association of America
Policy Corner E-Newsletter -- June 26, 2009
A weekly update on federal policy activity related to traumatic brain injury
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In This Issue:
Health Care Reform Update
SLI Announces Military Brain Donor Registry
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The Policy Corner is made possible by the Centre for Neuro Skills, James F. Humphreys and Associates, and Lakeview Healthcare Systems, Inc.  Brain Injury Association of America gratefully acknowledges their support for legislative action.
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Health Care Reform Update

This week Congress leaves for the July 4th recess in the midst of the Heath Care Reform debate.  At this time, both the Senate and the House of Representatives is engaging in talks over draft proposals with the hopes of bringing one collective measure to a final vote this fall.  BIAA will continue to monitor the situation closely and advocate for the provisions essential to the brain injury community.

Senate Finance Committee

The Senate Finance Committee, whose members have been negotiating a bipartisan proposal behind the scenes this week left Thursday for the July Fourth recess without a deal, although Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus said he has developed policy to pay for legislation that would cost less than $1 trillion over 10 years.

According to Congressional Quarterly, Baucus said the bill's cost would be offset, in part, by taxing some employer-sponsored health benefits, something that makes the White House and many lawmakers in both parties uneasy. Nonetheless, limiting the bill's spending to $1 trillion is a significant step for the Finance Committee, which has been seen as the main arena for those hoping to get a bipartisan health care bill.

Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (HELP)

This week, the Senate HELP committee continued to mark up a draft health care overhaul bill drafted by its chairman, Sen. Edward Kennedy.

On Wednesday, the HELP committee adopted 20 amendments to the bill that were considered noncontroversial. The amendments were adopted by voice vote.

Sen. Christopher Dodd, who is leading the markup while Kennedy is being treated for brain cancer at home in Massachusetts, said the committee has adopted 240 amendments to the bill thus far.

House Tri-Committee Proposal (Committee on Energy and Commerce, Committee on Education and Labor, Ways and Means Committee)

This week, the House began debating their draft Health Care Reform bill that was developed by the chairmen of the three committees of jurisdiction.

Both the Energy and Commerce and Education and Labor committees held public hearings on the measure Tuesday. The hearings covered the gamut of health policy issues under debate in Congress at the moment, including the merits of creating a government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers, how to finance an overhaul and how to protect doctor-patient relationships.

Importantly, the draft bill includes Rehabilitative services as part of the minimum benefits package and does not impose annual or lifetime limits on coverage. 


BIAA Supports the Sports Legacy Institute's Brain Donor Registry for Military Veterans

Leading medical experts at the Sports Legacy Institute (SLI), a nonprofit educational and research organization dedicated to advancing understanding of the long-term effects of brain trauma, announced Tuesday, June 23, 2009, that they have launched the SLI Military Living Donor Registry, a brain and spinal cord donation registry for active and veteran members of the United States military.

In conjunction with The Boston University Center, the Sports Legacy Institute will compare findings from the brains of military personnel with those from their athlete program, which has signed up more than 120 donors in less than a year, and other brain banks around the world.

Col. Michael S. Jaffee, national director of the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center, said the Defense Department supported the spirit of the research and could assist in approaching active and retired soldiers to register for brain donation.

BIAA enthusiastically supports this initiative and will continue to advocate on its behalf.  For further reading, click on the link below to view the New York Times article:  (The official press release will be available shortly on BIAA's web site:  www.biausa.org )

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Signs honoring a state trooper who was seriously injured by a drunken driver has been dedicated at a highway interchange on Cape Cod where she directed rush hour traffic for years.

Ellen Engelhardt sustained a severe brain injury in 2003 when a car driven by an 18-year-old Wayland man slammed into the back of her cruiser in the breakdown lane of Route 25. She remains confined to a special care facility in Middleborough.

The plaques bearing Engelhardt's name were unveiled Tuesday at Exit 7 off the mid-Cape highway in Yarmouth, where the trooper was a fixture directing morning traffic. The honor is a rare one for living police officers.
 

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While I have seen the uses and acceptance of PET in traumatic brain injury cases in the court room, this is something worth sharing on other uses of PET:

PET scans are commonly used to investigate the following conditions:
Epilepsy - it can reveal which part of the patient's brain is being affected by epilepsy. This helps doctors decide on the most suitable treatments.MRI and/or CT scans are recommended for people after a first seizure, this study explains.

Alzheimer's disease - it is very useful in helping the doctor diagnose Alzheimer's disease. A PET scan that measures uptake of sugar in the brain significantly improves the accuracy of diagnosing a type of dementia often mistaken for Alzheimer's disease, a study revealed.

Interesting related articles:

What is MRI? How does MRI work?

What is a CT scan? What is a CAT scan?
Cancer - PET scans can show up a cancer, reveal the stage of the cancer, show whether the cancer has spread, help doctors decide on the most appropriate cancer treatment, and give doctors an indication on the effectiveness of ongoing chemotherapy. A PET scan several weeks after starting radiation treatment for lung cancer can indicate whether the tumor will respond to the treatment, a study showed. This article looks at whether PET scans are beneficial during cancer diagnosis, staging and monitoring.

Heart disease - a PET scan helps detect which specific parts of the heart have been damaged or scarred. Any faults in the working of the heart are more likely to be revealed with the help of a PET scan. A study revealed how comprehensive diagnosis of heart disease based on a single CT scan is possible.

Medical research - researchers, especially those involved in how the brain functions get a great deal of vital data from PET scans.

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A 7-year-old Draper boy has died in an all-terrain vehicle crash at a family farm in southern Utah.

Landon Woodbury's father, Spencer Woodbury, says the boy and his 12-year-old sister were riding on ATVs at the farm near Monticello on Wednesday when the boy approached a dump truck that was carrying gravel.

The San Juan County sheriff's office says Landon Woodbury slammed into it and was thrown headfirst into the vehicle.

Landon Woodbury, who was wearing a helmet, sustained serious brain injuries and died on Thursday after being transferred to Primary Children's Medical Center in Salt Lake City.

San Juan County Sheriff Mike Lacy says rain and speed may have contributed to the accident, which is under investigation.
 

Read the full story by clicking here http://www.sltrib.com/

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Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a serious public health problem in the United States. Each year, traumatic brain injuries contribute to a substantial number of deaths and cases of permanent disability. Recent data shows that, on average, approximately 1.4 million people sustain a traumatic brain injury annually.

Go to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) to access the following facts sheets.  Click here.

Concussion in Sports
An estimated 1.6 to 3.8 million sports- and recreation-related concussions occur in the United States each year. This fact sheet provides an overview of concussion in sports and recreation and steps to take to help prevent these injuries.


Facts about Traumatic Brain Injury
This fact sheet was developed by CDC in collaboration with ten national organizations. It contains up-to-date information about the incidence, causes, risk factors, and cost associated with TBI in the United States.


Facts about Traumatic Brain Injury (Spanish) Datos sobre lesiones traumáticas del cerebro
Esta hoja informativa contiene la información más reciente sobre incidencia, causas, factores de riesgo y costos relacionados con lesiones traumáticas del cerebro.


Traumatic Brain Injury: A Guide for Criminal Justice Professionals
This guide provides an overview of TBI, information on the extent of TBI and related problems within the criminal justice system, and how these problem can be addressed.




Traumatic Brain Injury in Prisons and Jails: An Unrecognized Problem
This guide provides information for TBI professionals about what is known about individuals with TBI in prisons and jails, how TBI-related problems affect them and others while they are incarcerated, and what is needed to address these problems.


Victimization of Persons with Traumatic Brain Injury or Other Disabilities: A Fact Sheet for Professionals
This fact sheet was developed for professionals and provides an overview of the topic of victimization of persons with TBI or other disabilities.



Victimization of Persons with Traumatic Brain Injury or Other Disabilities: A Fact Sheet for Friends and Families
This fact sheet provides a general overview of victimization and risks to people with TBI or other disabilities.



 

* Links to non-Federal organizations found at this site are provided solely as a service to our users. These links do not constitute an endorsement of these organizations or their programs by CDC or the Federal Government, and none should be inferred. CDC is not responsible for the content of the individual organization Web pages found at these links.

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A Massachusettes man is charged with shaking his girlfriend's 10-month old baby to death.

Authorities say the boy died at Hasbro Children's Hospital in Providence after being diagnosed with diffuse brain edema and bilateral retinal hemorrhaging, both symptoms of shaken baby syndrome.

Police said Lopez was the only adult present at the apartment when the baby suffered extensive injuries. The baby's mother was working.
 

Heartbreaking.

Reported at http://www.southcoasttoday.com/

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I had the opportunity to hold a brain during my trip to the morgue a few years ago. It was an amazing experience. The brain is soft and infirm. It looks relatively symmetrical with each half held together at the corpus callosum.  

But each half is not perfectly symmetrical and that goes against the pop psychological “left-right brain” theories. Actually each half is not a mirror image of the other which enables us to perform different tasks at the same time.

“In the 1990s psychologist Michael Corballis of the University of Auckland in New Zealand argued that the asymmetry of the brain – known as lateralization - was a key step in the evolution of our species, giving us language and additional mental powers that other animals lack.

“Today Corballis readily admits he was wrong. Lateralized brains are not unique to humans. Parrots prefer picking up things with their left foot. Toads tend to attack other toads from the right but go after prey from the left. Zebra fish are likely to look at new things with their right eye and familiar things with their left….”

The May 2009 edition of Discover Magazine published an article by Carl Zimmer who frequently publishes on brain issues. He says, “One hypothesis is that a lateralized brain is more powerful than one that works like a mirror image. Instead of two matching parts of the brain performing an identical task, one can take charge, leaving the other free to do something else.”

It seems that our ability to multitask is owed largely to our not so symmetrical brain halves. Zimmer’s article is fascinating and can be read by clicking here.

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When Army Col. (Dr.) Kenneth Lee began evaluating more than 3,000 Wisconsin Army National Guardsmen called to duty last fall in the state's largest operational deployment since World War II to ensure their medical readiness, he approached the task with unique and personal insights.  Soldiers are not willing to reveal their injuries.

Between their initial alert last year and early this year, when they moved to their mobilization station at Fort Bliss, Texas, Lee had to put these Soldiers into one of two categories: "green" if they were deployable or "red" for they weren't.

It was a tough call, he admits, because many of the Soldiers didn't want to confess to issues that might keep them from deploying with their units. Some hid musculoskeletal or other injuries for fear they'd be forced out of the military if deemed nondeployable. Others acknowledged they had medical issues, but hadn't addressed them because they had no health insurance or couldn't spare time away from their civilian jobs to get treated.

But the bigger challenge, Lee said, was identifying troops with mental-health issues, including post-traumatic stress and traumatic brain injuries. Lee calls these "the invisible wounds" of war - issues that don't mean a Soldier can't deploy, but that have to be weighed when making that determination.
 

This problem has come up more and more as physicans and VET medical staff have dealt with returning vets.

I am currently handling a case for a man who underwent moderate to severe brain damage, surgery and near fatal seizures.  Yet when given the chance to return to Iraq for a tour of duty, he opts to go since his working ability as a civilian has plummeted. It is my hope that the military will identify the problems this man has and not let him go into harms way.  He is currently receiving training for preparedness to return to Iraq.

I have sent the medical records documenting the seizures and injury but find it difficult to get the attention of the military decision makers.  Therefore I advocate procedures like those taken by Army Col. (Dr.) Kenneth Lee.

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Dr. Baxter writes in response to my post on getting immediate care in brain injury:

Just last month I witnessed an 83 year old woman stumble and fall on her face. She wanted to go, but I kept her there, administered first aid and called paramedics. By the time she was strapped down to the back board in readiness to transport her (against her will) to the hospital, she began acting very combative. Combativeness in a victim of head trauma is a very strong sign that brain injury was sustained. You just can't tell immediately after the trauma. It is always best to take the proper precautions.

Recently, progesterone therapy has been found to have very potent anti-inflammatory effects on the brains of people that have suffered traumatic brain injury, thereby lessening the severity of the injury. This is just further evidence that there are many reasons why we all need to do all we can to promote hormone balance in ourselves and others.

Thank you for the comment.

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