Brain Injury Study reveals Structural Change
Dr. Brian Levine of the Rotman Research Institute and the University of Toronto, whose study appears in the journal Neurology, finds brain volume loss occurs when tissue dies follwoing brain injury. Levine found losses involved both frontal and posterior brain regions, and the damage was greatest to white matter: tissue that makes up the brain's communication network.
Levine studied brain scans taken from 69 traumatic brain injury patients whose head injuries ranged from mild to moderate or severe. The researchers used high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging or MRI to study changes in brain volume a year after the injury.
They ran a computer analysis of these images and found that even patients with mild brain injuries with no apparent scarring had less brain volume.
These findings, published in a widely recognized journal, will help physcians in assisting patients. Levine said the study does not mean that people who have had mild head injuries will have a disability, but it might help to explain why some people never quite recover from their head injury.
"You hear this all the time from people, that they're not the same. A lot of times doctors don't know why," Levine said.
According the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at least, 1.4 million people in the United States suffer a traumatic brain injury each year.
At least 5.3 million Americans, or about 2 percent of the U.S. population, need help to perform activities of daily living as a result of their brain injuries.
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