Injury News

If Michael Waltrip were to count up all the concussions he has sustained over a NASCAR career that stretches back nearly 30 years, he’d certainly hit 10 — and probably keep going. Safety measures since Dale Earnhardt’s death in 2001 have gone a long way toward preventing head injuries, and NASCAR officials have taken steps to improve the way they identify and treat concussions. But Waltrip knows that won’t undo all those hits he took in the 1980s and ‘90s.

The “signature wounds” of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury — are both rooted in traumatic events. Until recently, though, military docs mostly treated them as two different health problems: one physical, the other psychological. That approach might be poised to change, thanks to a new study, which shows that injuries to a specific part of the brain “primed” it for PTSD’s psychological ailments.

Could freestyle skier Sarah Burke, who died Jan. 19, nine days after a devastating crash, have been helped by an experimental drug? A new study offers a glimmer of hope for future victims of traumatic brain injury. In the hours after she has sustained a blow to the head, the victim of a traumatic injury experiences a slow down of blood flow to the brain -- arguably when she needs it most. That mismatch between a brain's response and its needs in the wake of injury has set many a neuroscientist thinking: Can a way be found to keep the flow of oxygenated blood pumping normally? And if it can, could that reduce the damage done by a blow that affects the brain?

A new drug is showing promise in shielding against the harmful effects of traumatic brain injury in rats, according to a new study.

Brain scans of two strains of mice imbibing significant quantities of alcohol reveal serious shrinkage in some brain regions -- but only in mice lacking a particular type of receptor for dopamine, the brain's "reward" chemical. The study provides new evidence that these dopamine receptors may play a protective role against alcohol-induced brain damage.

Scientists have provided the first evidence of a link between a traumatic brain injury and increased susceptibility to post-traumatic stress disorder.

Erratic driving by returning troops is being identified as a symptom of traumatic brain injury or post-traumatic stress disorder — and coming under greater scrutiny.

I am sure this young enlisted Marine wasn't familiar with the research linking chronic physical and psychological disability to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. What he did know was that he had seen horrific things, and he needed help.