The New York Times reported:
Patients who received a bioengineered protein during spinal fusion procedures to correct neck pain had far more complications than patients who did not get it, according to a study released Tuesday.
The study, published Tuesday in The Journal of the American Medical Association, reinforces previous concerns about the use of the proteins in fusion procedures to treat upper spine, or cervical, pain.
Read more by clicking here.
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. A TBI is caused by a bump, blow or jolt to the head or a penetrating head injury that disrupts the normal function of the brain. Not all blows or jolts to the head result in a TBI. The severity of a TBI may range from “mild,” i.e., a brief change in mental status or consciousness to “severe,” i.e., an extended period of unconsciousness or amnesia after the injury. The majority of TBIs that occur each year are concussions or other forms of mild TBI. CDC’s research and programs work to prevent TBI and help people better recognize, respond, and recover if a TBI occurs.
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.
Timothy R. Titolo resides in Las Vegas. His practice is exclusively personal injury cases. He holds specific interest in cases involving traumatic brain injury (TBI), spine and spinal cord injury (SCI) and auto, motorcycle and truck accidents. He is a member of the Million Dollar Advocates Forum.
Because of his experience handling brain, spine and other injury cases, Tim has been invited to lecture at over 50 attorney & medical conferences around the country. He has lectured for:
American Association of Justice
North American Brain Injury Society
Brain Injury Association of America
International Brain Injury Association
National Business Institute
Pacific Northwest Brain Injury Association
Oregon Brain Injury Association
Washington Brain Injury Association
Los Angeles County Bar Association
Utah Trial Lawyers Assocation
Utah Brain Injury Association
Nevada Brain Injury Association
Michigan Brain Injury Association
other brain injury affiliated groups
Tim Is a Fellow with AAJ's National College of Advocacy and is recognized for completion of the Advanced Studies of Trial Advocacy Program.
A tremendously important story has gone virtually untold by the media, ignored by our political leaders and unknown to the American public. Despite the extraordinarily high price they have paid, America's severely wounded veterans are enduring humiliating financial hardships of epic proportions. Home evictions, utility shutoffs, car repossessions and foreclosures are 
commonplace.
Spouses have to give up their jobs to become caregivers, cutting family incomes by up to 50 percent or more. Most disabled vets receive much less in compensation and benefits than they did while on active duty, reducing incomes even further. Many are too dysfunctional to hold a meaningful job, if any, because of the devastating effects of post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD) and traumatic brain injury (TBI).
Rick Amato of the Washington Press. Rick Amato is a radio talk-show host in San Diego and with Washington Times Radio News. Amato Strategic Communications provides consulting services to nonprofit organizations, including veterans causes.
There is a great deal of information out there on PTSD and the military, and this may largely be due to the origins of the PTSD diagnosis.
Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can be considered a "young" diagnosis. It was not until 1980 that the diagnosis of PTSD as we know it today came to be. However, throughout history, people have recognized that exposure to combat situations can have a profound negative impact on the minds and bodies of those involved in these situations.
In fact, the diagnosis of PTSD originates from observations of the effect of combat on soldiers. The grouping of symptoms that we now refer to as PTSD has previously been described in the past as "combat fatigue," "shell shock," or "war neurosis."
It is not surprising that high rates of PTSD have been found among soldiers from World War II, the Vietnam War, the Persian Gulf War, and the war in Iraq.
Rick's perspectives include getting congress to put soldier and veterans disability right to top of the stimulus packages being authorized of late. He quotes President Reagan "Until our politicians feel the heat, they won't see the light."
Read the whole article in the Washington Press including a specific case of a military couple struggling to endure.
It's nearly impossible to tell if a former soldier convicted of killing an Iraqi family has brain damage because of the method used to scan his brain, a neurologist testified Tuesday.
Dr. Helen Mayberg, a professor at Emory University in Atlanta, said the wrong protocols were used during an MRI of former Pfc. Steven Dale Green. Instead of what amounted to a complete scan of Green's brain, his MRI included pauses between each scan, Mayberg said.
I first ran into Dr. Mayberg in a brain injury case I tried before a jury in the early 1990s. She adamantly
said that Positron Emission Tomography (PET) was not useful for corroborating diagnosis of brain injury caused by trauma. Dr. Joseph Wu of UC Irvine said it was one tool used among the others available. The PET scan Dr. Wu performed was allowed into evidence by the court.
It is very interesting to note that so-called experts hired by defense lawyer firms come up with the same type of testimony in virtually every case. What ever the treating or plaintiff's expert says is "wrong."
While hired in a criminal case:
Prosecutors called Mayberg to the stand to rebut the May 12 testimony of Ruben Gur, director of neuropsychology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.
Gur, called by the defense, reviewed a 2008 MRI and found Green has brain damage. He made the diagnosis after comparing Green's MRI to scans from 41 other men of roughly the same age without brain injuries. People with such injuries have "major difficulties" restraining their impulses, he said.
Defense attorneys have argued that Green's lack of impulse control was a factor in him taking part in the slayings of the al-Janabi family.
Defense attorney Scott Wendelsdorf, while questioning Mayberg, said MRI's don't necessarily tell the entire story of what is happening in someone's brain.
"A normal MRI doesn't mean nothing is wrong with a brain, does it?" Wendelsdorf asked.
"That's a very true statement," Mayberg said.
Dr. Mayberg has made a good living testifying against plaintiffs and criminal defendants. Read about the case by clicking here.
Indiana National Guard Sgt. Gerald "G.J." Cassidy, who served his country in Bosnia and Iraq, died alone and ignored in a barracks at Fort Knox from an accidental drug overdose. His fate left a legacy that has changed the lives of thousands of wounded soldiers, Army officials say.
Cassidy began experiencing migraine headaches after a roadside bomb exploded about 11 feet from his Humvee in Iraq in August 2006. With diagnoses of post traumatic stress disorder and mild traumatic brain injury.
One Fort Knox soldier told investigators, "The staff at the WTU did not keep accountability of soldiers and were not making any checks on the welfare of soldiers" with PTSD and brain injury.
On the day Cassidy died, his platoon sergeant reported him at formation when he actually hadn't seen him for two days.
After repeated calls from Melissa Cassidy after she had not heard from him in a couple of days, Sgt. Cassidy was found dead in his chair. A toxicology report from the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology ruled his death accidental, caused by "multi-drug toxicity," compounded by coronary artery disease.
Excerpted from Soldier's hospital death leads to changes as published in Associated Press. Information from: The Courier-Journal, http://www.courier-journal.com
I will never forgot the experience of deposing the coroner in a brain injury case. The deposition was at the morgue. Afterward, we, the attorneys for all parties and the court reporter, were treated to a tour. What amazed me most was how numbed the folks working there were to the noxious fumes that pushed their way into your olfactory center.
Then as a personal favor to me, I was permitted to hold brains that had been removed from bodies. I was able to get a never before view of the brain's structure, texture and size.
I recently came across an interesting article from someone having a similar experience. Discover Magazine contributor, Carl Zimmer, published "The Brain The Big Similarities & Quirky Differences Between Our Left and Right Brains," in the May 2009 issue. Brain lateralization is the cooperation of right and left brain. He states:
No matter how lateralized the brain can get, though, the two sides still work together. The pop psychology notion of a left brain and a right brain doesn’t capture their intimate working relationship. The left hemisphere specializes in picking out the sounds that form words and working out the syntax of the words, for example, but it does not have a monopoly on language processing. The right hemisphere is actually more sensitive to the emotional features of language, tuning in to the slow rhythms of speech that carry intonation and stress.
Neuroscientists know that the hemispheres work together and that they do so by communicating through the corpus callosum. But exactly how the hemispheres cooperate is not so clear. Perhaps paired regions take turns being dominant. That is known to happen in some animals. For instance, dolphins use this strategy to sleep and swim at the same time: One hemisphere remains active for hours, then fades while the other takes over. Bird brains switch as well. In order to sing, a songbird makes the two sides of its lungs open and close. The two hemispheres of the bird’s brain take turns controlling the song, each dominating for a hundredth of a second.
The intimate cooperation between the two hemispheres makes it all the more remarkable that a person can survive with just one—a sign that the brain is far more malleable than we once thought. After a hemisphere is forced to manage on its own, it can rewire itself to handle all the tasks of a full brain. In fact, two hemispheres can cause more trouble than one if they cannot talk clearly to each other. Neuroscientists have linked some mental disorders, including dyslexia and Alzheimer’s, with a breakdown in left-right communication.
The two sides of the brain may be a legacy that we inherited from our wormlike ancestors. But their delicate balance of symmetry and specialization is now woven into the very essence of human nature.
Read the full article here.
Research is the key to understanding and dealing with Traumatic Brain injury.
National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS)conducts and supports research on Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) to better understand the biological mechanisms of injury, to develop strategies and interventions to limit the primary and secondary brain damage that occur following TBI, and to devise effective treatment strategies to improve long-term recovery of function. NINDS areas of research include:
1. Assessment of posttraumatic brain function and pathology
2. Discovering mechanisms of brain injury and repair processes
3. Identification of therapeutic targets
4. Translational research for therapy development
5, Clinical trials to evaluate therapeutic efficacy
6. Current TBI clinical trials at NIH and other organizations
7. NINDS Clinical Research Overview
The NINDS publishes Traumatic Brain Injury: Hope through Research and NINDS Shaken Baby Syndrome Information Page. Click on either link to see more.
I printed this article several years ago and thought it worth republishing as it is still timely.
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Guide to Selecting Lawyer in Traumatic Brain Injury Case
Timothy R. Titolo
INTRODUCTION
There are many people with traumatic brain injury who never receive adequate compensation for their injuries. This happens because many lawyers simply do not have the education or experience to analyze, prepare, understand or present a case involving traumatic brain injury. In today’s legal climate attorneys who do “personal injury” are not all equally competent to handle traumatic brain injury cases. Just as a person with traumatic brain injury needs special medical care, so too they need special legal representation. In Nevada, and throughout the United States, and because of contingency fee agreements, every person can afford to hire the most qualified lawyer to handle their case. 
It is easy to assume that a “big firm” is most qualified to handle “any case.” However, this is simply not so. The trend of firms handling Plaintiff’s cases is to network with specific attorneys in the particular field. For instance there are a number of attorneys nationwide who are known for their handling of traumatic brain injury cases. Consumers need to know if attorneys in their jurisdiction are members of such special expertise groups.
The purpose of this article to assist and guide people with traumatic brain injury, and their families, to select and retain the most qualified attorney for these types of cases.
CONTINGENCY FEE AGREEMENTS
In most states, including Nevada, persons with injury have the ability to hire an attorney by using a contingency fee agreement. This is a situation where the attorney agrees to be paid out of the amount recovered. In the meantime, the attorney customarily advances the case costs and receives reimbursement, also, from the amount recovered. This empowers anyone to retain the most qualified lawyer since lawyers from both ends of the spectrum enter into the same contingency agreements with consumers. This, unfortunately, is where many consumers of legal services are lead astray. Injured persons in our society have the ability to hire the most qualified attorneys and need not settle for or accept unqualified, inexperienced or incapable attorneys for their injury cases. This is especially true in cases of traumatic brain injury. A lawyer should have significant experience with and knowledge of the injury.
What to ask the lawyer before you decide
What most people are good at and familiar with is buying stereo systems, VCRs, cars and similar goods. However when deciding on services, like legal services, many consumers lack the information necessary to make the best decision. After all isn’t that why they hire accountants and doctors and plumbers - because they do not know what these professionals know? And so it is with legal services. It is hoped that this article and attached checklist will make it easier for people to make this most important decision.
As consumer, you have the absolute right, in the initial interview, to ask the attorney various questions about his or her background and work in the area of closed head injury. Remember, the lawyer is applying for the position of representing you in your case. Do not be afraid to ask questions. The results of your lawsuit will likely have a very long term and life long impact. Therefore the more qualified your attorney the better the result is likely to be. Please take the information in this article with you to the initial interview with the attorney and use it in questioning the attorney about education, experience and competence in handling cases similar to yours. At the end of the interview, ask the attorney to sign it acknowledging that the answers are true and accurate.
The following questions are suggested:
1. How many cases have you been involved with over the past three years?
2. What percentage of your practice of law is devoted to handling cases and injuries similar to mine?
3. What were the results in terms of settlements or verdicts of the last 5 cases you handled that were similar to mine?
4. What associations do you participate in that deal with injuries like mine?
5. List three textbooks that you own and refer to when discussing injuries similar to mine?
6. Show me a text you have read regarding my injury within the last 6 months.
7. Name the seminars dealing with my injury you have attended in the last two years.
8. How many articles have you written over the past three years that deal with any aspect of injury similar to mine?
9. Would your law firm be able and willing to spend in advance as much as $50,000 in the investigation, preparation, and presentation of my case, if necessary?
10. How do you plan to prepare and present my case and what experts do you plan to use?
Fundamental Knowledge
An attorney who you are considering must know, at an absolute minimum, that doctors and neuropsychologists involved in clinical practice, diagnosis and treatment of persons with traumatic brain injury agree that a person can have a serious, permanent and disabling injury even though:
1. A person typically does not perceive a head injury for weeks and months after the trauma.
2. Loss of consciousness is not necessary to have an altered state of consciousness or brain injury.
3. Persons may appear “ok” at the accident scene and even be exchanging insurance information.
4. Injury to the brain does not necessarily accompany broken bone or open wounds.
5. Normal skull x-ray, CT scan, MRI, EEG and other tests are expected.
6. Persons with traumatic brain injury are often misdiagnosed by general practitioners and other doctors.
7. There are reports of vision and hearing problems despite normal eye and ear exams.
8. They continue with their employment or school.
9. Problems may be described as depression or faking (which is caused by the brain damage not the other way around).
CONCLUSION
All too often people assume that the “family lawyer,” whether the one who formed the family corporation or one who a friend referred who handled their “car accident,” is appropriate to handle a brain injury case. After all isn’t any lawyer capable of handling all injury cases? Certainly not! That is akin to assuming all heart surgeons are equally qualified as back surgeons to fuse a disc. Traumatic Brain Injury litigation requires not only extensive experience but devotion to the study of brain injury as a distinct topic. Further, consumers deserve dignity and respect and need an attorney who understands the losses they experience every day.
The BIAA is having its annual conference in Las Vegas at the end of the month. One of the featured speakers is Nathan Zasler. Dr. Zasler just finished and book entitled The Neurology of Consciousness: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuropathology.
This is a very welcome addition to the field of neuroscience literature and should be read by anyone involved in the care of persons with disorders of consciousness. The book starts with a thoughtful Preface by the editors, Dr. Laureys and Dr. Tononi, which is followed by yet another introspective commentary by Dr. Allan Hobson of Harvard Medical School in the form of a Prologue. The contributors to this text include some quickly recognizable names, including Drs. James Bernat, Antonio Damasio, Joseph Fins, Michael Gazzaniga, Adrian Owen, Joseph Giacino, Nicholas Schiff and Adam Zeman, among others.
Read the full review here.
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In an amazing story, A Jackson County man died and his wife was critically injured Tuesday in what authorities described as an attempted murder and suicide at a home off Tanner Williams Road in the Harelston community.
Jackson County Sheriff Mike Byrd said a witness called for help after she was able to escape the home of the victim, Tammy H. Sexton, 47, who had been shot in the head.
The woman was found lying on the bed talking to authorities. Authorities, cited in the Sun Herald, stated. "“It’s truly a miracle that she survived something like this and was talking and conscious,” Byrd said Wednesday. “She had a gunshot wound that went in over her left eye and exited the back of her skull. Based on everything I’ve seen in my career, she shouldn’t be alive.”
Once again, a story of a severe brain injury where the victim walks and talks afterwards. It is reported Tammy Sexton offered authorities tea even with the penetrating would she sustained.
This is similar to the famous case of Phinneas Gage who suffered a railroad iron through his head and frontal lobe and never lost conciousness in 1848. He survived however lived a forever changed life in that his personality was irreparably compromised.
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California-based College Hospitals has agreed to pay $1.6 million to settle charges that two of its campuses improperly discharged and transported about 150 psychiatric patients to homeless shelters in downtown Los Angeles, City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo's office announced on Wednesday, the AP/Kansas City Star reports (Tayefe Mohajer, AP/Kansas City Star, 4/8). City officials alleged the infractions, by College Hospitals' facilities in Costa Mesa and Cerritos, occurred between 2007 and 2008.
The Los Angeles Times reports that the process was discovered by state officials after Steven Davis -- who was diagnosed with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and schizoaffective disorder -- was treated at the Costa Mesa campus and then taken in a hospital van more than 
40 miles to downtown Los Angeles and dropped off at a homeless shelter. Officials at the shelter complained to the hospital about its action. The van returned and dropped Davis off at a second shelter, but Davis "wandered away without ever entering," the Times reports. City prosecutors then uncovered what they described as the largest case of "homeless dumping" they have encountered, according to the Times (DiMassa/Winton, Los Angeles Times, 4/9).
Under the settlement, College Hospitals will give $1.2 million to charities that care for the mentally ill and homeless and pay $400,000 in civil penalties (AP/Kansas City Star, 4/8). College Hospitals also will have one year to establish written protocols for releasing patients, including locating resources to care for them and obtaining voluntary consent before patients are transported. The two facilities will be barred from taking patients to any homeless shelter within a "patient safety zone" set up in downtown L.A. Delgadillo said, "Dumping patients who are sick or mentally ill on the streets of Skid Row is an unconscionable act," adding, "It's illegal, it's immoral and it has to stop" (Perkes, Orange County Register, 4/8).
College Hospitals attorney Glenn Solomon said that the hospital denies any wrongdoing and that its actions never amounted to "homeless dumping." He added that the hospital agreed to the settlement to establish a workable policy for dealing with homeless patients in the future. "It's the policy of the hospital ... to discharge each and every patient appropriately," Solomon said (Los Angeles Times, 4/9). He added, "The hospital believes it's a good thing to be at the forefront of developing these protocols" (Orange County Register, 4/8).
Reprinted with kind permission from http://www.kaisernetwork.org. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, search the archives, or sign up for email delivery at http://www.kaisernetwork.org/dailyreports/healthpolicy. The Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report is published for kaisernetwork.org, a free service of The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.
I finished Winner Takes All, a book about Las Vegas and people who run the casino empires. Interestingly, two out of three of the casino empire operators do not call Las Vegas home and actually raise their families in NY and California. Yet one does call Las Vegas home and his contributions to the Las Vegas cutting edge are undeniable.
Former Wall Street Journal reporter Christina Binkley offers this story of the trio of tycoons who took over Las Vegas and transformed it from a crushed-velvet world with a libidinous frontier air into a place where, increasingly and sometimes surprisingly, entertainment and good taste go hand in hand.
Binkley provides an inside look at deal-maker Kerkorian, casino visionary Wynn and professor-turned-mogul Loveman and their lavishly competitive lives: their exclusive and aggressive tennis games, the one-way conveyor belt created to transport customers away from a competing casino, the battle to build the biggest and the best. The author shares intriguing details about these power players—Wynn has a secret entrance, behind some fake books on a shelf, to a sprawling closet—and is also adept at portraying a seedier Vegas, where aged Mafia barons dined on the osso buco at Piero's Italian restaurant, their canes hanging from their chairs.
Sometimes her chronology gets a little murky. Still, Binkley offers plenty of nuggets mined from her years on the beat, producing a full, flashy tale of powerful men and their pride, vanity, envy, greed—and all the other cardinal no-nos that earned Vegas the name Sin City.
Timothy R. Titolo resides in Las Vegas, Nevada. He represents plaintiffs in personal injury cases. His specific interest is in cases involving traumatic brain injury (TBI), spinal cord injury (SCI) (including back and neck injury) and car, motorcycle and truck accidents.
Tim is a member of the Million Dollar Advocates Forum. He serves on the Board of Directors of the American Association of Justice Traumatic Brain Injury Litigation Group. He is an active member of AAJ's Interstate Trucking Litigation Group, Motorcycle Litigation Group and Inadequate Security Litigation Group. Tim is recognized as a Fellow of the National College of Advocacy.
Because of his experience handling brain, spine and other catastrophic injury cases, Tim has been invited to lecture at over 50 legal & medical conferences around the country. He has lectured for:
When not practicing law, Tim enjoys spending time with his family, reading, writing, watching movies, traveling and exercising.
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