Skip to main content

Traumatic Brain Injury Afflicts How Many Vets?

Have you seen or heard the ads for a nonprofit that aids veterans? "One in five returning vets has a traumatic brain injury." I pictured thousands of troops returning from duty, unable to perform everyday tasks--and the image didn't seem realistic. What does the statistic on the radio ad really mean?

First, the image of severe brain damage doesn't apply to every case. According to the Mayo Clinic,

Traumatic brain injury is usually the result of a sudden, violent blow to the head — which launches the brain on a collision course with the inside of the skull. This collision can bruise the brain, tear nerve fibers and cause bleeding.

Traumatic brain injury may also be caused by objects such as bullets or even a shattered piece of the skull entering brain tissue.

The severity of traumatic brain injury can vary greatly, depending on the part of the brain affected and the extent of the damage. A mild traumatic brain injury may cause temporary confusion and headache, but a serious one can be fatal.
It sounds like what used to be called a concussion, and that there's a wide variation in the severity of injury.

Now, where does the one-in-five figure come from?

An article in the New England Journal of Medicine(1) reports,

According to the Joint Theater Trauma Registry, compiled by the U.S. Army Institute of Surgical Research, 22 percent of the wounded soldiers from these conflicts [in Iraq and Afghanistan] who have passed through the military's Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany had injuries to the head, face, or neck. This percentage can serve as a rough estimate of the fraction who have TBI, according to Deborah L. Warden, a neurologist and psychiatrist at Walter Reed Army Medical Center who is the national director of the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center (DVBIC). Warden said the true proportion is probably higher, since some cases of closed brain injury are not diagnosed promptly. (emphasis mine)
In 2006, another group of doctors did an "anonymous survey of 2714 soldiers from two U.S. Army combat infantry brigades — one Active Component and one Reserve Component (Army National Guard) — 3 to 4 months after their return from a yearlong deployment in Iraq. The units saw high levels of combat, similar to those of other infantry units." Of those who responded, 15% had suffered injuries and symptoms defined as "mild traumatic brain injury."(2) (The survey didn't seem to be looking at those who had more severe brain injuries.) What did they consider a mild brain injury?

A soldier was considered to have had a mild traumatic brain injury if any of three questions — regarding “losing consciousness (knocked out),” “being dazed, confused, or `seeing stars,'” or “not remembering the injury” — elicited a positive response.
This raises the question, What portion of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are combat infantry? An article in the New York Times(3) reads, "According to Pentagon statistics, about 23 percent of the troops currently assigned to the Iraq mission conduct primarily combat jobs."

In other words, perhaps 15% of combat infantrymen serving in Iraq and Afghanistan sustain mild brain injuries (probably, fewer of them sustain more serious brain injuries) and around 22% of badly wounded troops have traumatic brain injuries.

If we assume that non-combat troops are a lot less likely to be wounded, and that most troops aren't wounded at all, and that many troops are assigned to places other than Iraq and Afghanistan, the one-in-five vets having traumatic brain injuries sounds unrealistically high.

(1) "Traumatic Brain Injury in the War Zone," New England Journal of Medicine, May 19, 2005

(2) "Mild Traumatic Brain Injury in U.S. Soldiers Returning from Iraq" by Charles W. Hoge, M.D., Dennis McGurk, Ph.D., Jeffrey L. Thomas, Ph.D., Anthony L. Cox, M.S.W., Charles C. Engel, M.D., M.P.H., and Carl A. Castro, Ph.D. New England Journal of Medicine, January 31, 2008

(3) Pulling Out Combat Troops Would Still Leave Most Forces in Iraq by By THOM SHANKER, New York Times, Published: December 10, 2006.
Labels:

Comments

Lori Miller said…
I appreciate comments, even those that disagree with what I've written, but I don't allow political rants on my blog. Blogspot doesn't have a means of editing comments--I can only publish them or not.
February 14, 2011
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Thanksgiving recipes for Pumpkin Pie & Cranberries--printable!

If you'd rather read a printed recipe than watch a video, here are my recent recipes for Better than Grandma's Pumpkin Pie and Probiotic Cranberry-Apple Relish.  Hat tip to Dana Carpender, whose pumpkin pie recipe inspired this one. The cranberry-apple ferment is entirely my own creation.  Pumpkin Pie--no grains, sugar or emulsifiers Crust 2 cups shelled raw pecans 1/4 teaspoon salt 1/4 teaspoon monk fruit powder* (or 3 tablespoons sugar substitute) 4 tablespoons butter, melted 2 tablespoons water Pumpkin Pie Filling 1 pie pumpkin 1-1/2 cups half and half (with no thickeners) 3 eggs 3-4 teaspoons monk fruit powder* (or 3/4 cup sugar substitute) 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 tablespoon pumpkin pie spice Preheat the oven to 350F. Stab the top of the pumpkin all the way through the flesh in a few places at the top. Place the pumpkin on a cookie sheet and bake for 1 hour. Let cool. While the pumpkin is baking, put the pecans in a food processor with the S blade and run until they are finely...
Post a Comment
Read more

Fly with Reuteri

If you're planning to travel by plane and you want to keep enjoying the benefits of l. reuteri yogurt, you might have gotten sticker shock from the price of l. reuteri probiotics. MyReuteri * costs $46 to $83 for 30 capsules, depending on the CFUs (colony-forming units, or the number of viable microorganisms). If you're thinking about economizing by putting some yogurt in a sturdy container and taking it with you, you can do that. I'll break down the pros and cons and look at some alternatives.  Photo from Unsplash . Cost Yogurt might be less expensive than probiotics, but it isn't free. A half-cup serving costs about 70¢ to make if you start with a previous batch. It contains about 90 billion CFUs if fermented for 36 hours.  This is a lot less than $5.56 for two capsules of 50 billion CFU MyReuteri, but for a one-week vacation, you'd only save $34 by eating yogurt instead. (You can freeze any unused capsules for later.)  Furthermore, the yogurt would have to go in ...
Post a Comment
Read more

30-second Fix for a Cracked Stick Blender

Use Mighty Fixit (if you still have some from 2012) or Rescue Tape (which looks like a similar product) to fix a cracked stick blender. After I fixed the attachment, I washed it in the sink and the tape held up. I also wrapped a knife handle several years ago, and it's been through thousands of washings.
Post a Comment
Read more

Cigna is Making Progress

Yesterday as I put my lunch in the refrigerator at work, I noticed a bunch of unfamiliar people in the break room. One of them, Pepe, started in: they were there for the health fair, they would check your cholesterol, the sugar in your blood, your height, your weight, and it would just take six minutes. A coworker asked him if he'd ever considered a career in sales. Just for blog fodder, I participated. They really were fast, and one even found me at my desk (in an office nearly half the size of a city block) after the tests were finished. My HDL cholesterol was 65--up from 42 from a year and a half ago, and up from 57, where it was last year when I'd been three months a low-carb diet . A level over 60 is considered good. I haven't taken any medication to make this happen. I went on a low-carb diet and eliminated wheat. I also take vitamin and mineral supplements in addition to a high-nutrient diet. What impressed me more, though, was that the nurse (and Cigna) said that bl...
Post a Comment
Read more

Holiday Dinner Tip from Restaurant Pros: Limit the Menu

After watching some people online getting freaked out about trying to put on holiday dinners and getting overwhelmed to the point that they're thinking about canceling the whole thing, I thought I'd put out a restaurant tip that will help people put on a dinner with less aggravation. A big complaint among the frustrated home cooks I've seen is that family members are not contributing to the dinner. But a bigger problem I see is that their menu is just too big. One lady's family is having her make 12 dishes all by herself, and some of these dishes look pretty complicated. Watch the video here or read on. The reason this is aggravating is that more dishes mean more shopping, more prep, and more cleanup. It's hard to make several dishes that will all be ready at the same time. Even though I used to be a prep cook at a restaurant, I've put on Thanksgiving dinners myself, and I cook from scratch almost every day, there's no way I'd try to make a 12-course di...
Post a Comment
Read more