New Treatment for Traumatic Brain Injury
Currently there are no drugs with which to treat and cure brain injury. Standard treatment is supportive: stabilizing the patient, maintaining other vital functions such as blood pressure and breathing, treating other injuries, minimizing infections, and monitoring swelling.
Blogger David S. Casey writes about a new study.
A promising new treatment for traumatic brain injury, the first significant advance in 30 years, is now being tested in a large scale, multi-center clinical trial. Over the next three to four years, 17 participating trauma centers in 15 states will enroll more than 1100 patients with severe TBI. Half of the patients with severe head injuries will be given an infusion of the hormone progesterone as well as all standard treatment for TBI; the other patients will be given a placebo infusion, which contains no active agents, and as well as all standard treatment. The study will evaluate the protective effect of the hormone progesterone when it is administered within four hours of the injury. The study is double-blinded, meaning neither patients nor treatment staff will know which infusion the patient receives.
Read more from David S. Casey here.
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A 5-year study of patients with severe traumatic brain injury conducted at Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis shows significant benefit of hyperbaric oxygen therapy to improve brain metabolism and its ability to recover from injury. The results were recently published in the 
