09.28.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 4:36 pm by Last
Myth 1: Mild traumatic brain injury is not serious.
Traumatic brain injury is usually broken into three classifications: severe, moderate, and mild. Unfortunately, the latter classification –mild traumatic brain injury –does the disservice of making the injury seem trivial or insignificant. This was recognized by Dr. Nathan Zasler in his chapter in Medical Rehabilitation of Traumatic Brain Injury. There, Dr. Zasler wrote:
“Modifiers such as subtle, minimal and minor are to be discouraged. Practitioners
must understand that the term “mild” describes only the initial insult relative to
the degree of neurological severity. There may be no correlation with the degree
of short or long-term impairment or functional disability.”
The National Institute of Health recently released a NIH consensus statement on rehabilitation of persons with traumatic brain injury. The NIH reported, “Since TBI may result in life-long impairment of an individual’s physical, cognitive and psycho social functioning and prevalence is estimated to be 2.5 million to 6.5 million individuals, traumatic brain injury is a disorder of major public health significance. Furthermore, mild TBI is significantly under-diagnosed and the likely societal burden therefore even greater.”
What is mild traumatic brain injury? This question was posed to a select committee assembled by the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine. They developed a definition of mild traumatically induced physiological disruption of brain function as manifested by at least one of the following: Any alteration in mental state at the time of the accident, such as feeling dazed, disoriented or confused. This definition includes the head being struck, the head striking an object, or the brain undergoing an acceleration/ deceleration movement without direct external trauma to the head. Mild traumatic brain injury may cause physical symptoms, cognitive deficits and behavioral changes. Physical symptoms of mild traumatic brain injury may include nausea, vomiting, dizziness, headache, blurred vision and fatigue. The cognitive deficits of mild traumatic brain injury include problems with attention, concentration, perception, memory, speech, and language and executive functions. Finally, behavioral changes may include irritability, quickness to anger, emotional ability, and dysinhibition.
You can read my other posts on the 10 myths of traumatic brain injuries here.
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09.27.07
Posted in Brain Injury Resources & Links at 2:15 pm by Last
The Brain Injury Association of New Jersey will hold the Walk for Though, Cycle for Safety event to benefit the more than 5.3 million people living with brain injuries across the country. The event will be held Saturday October 13, 2007 at the Washington Crossing Park in Titusville, NJ and at the Saddle River County Park in Paramus, NJ.
The walk For Thought / Cycle For Safety is an opportunity to raise public awareness, to celebrate the achievements of people living with brain injury and to honor those who have sustained brain injuries and cannot walk with us. This is a great event to raise awareness for the ever-increasing need to support those who have suffered a traumatic brain injury, or those friends and family members who have also been affected by a TBI.
If you would like to register to participate at this event, please contact Tim Manni at tmanni@bianj.org or Joanna Boyd at jboyd@bianj.org or call 732-738-1002.
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09.26.07
Posted in Brain Injury News at 6:33 pm by Last
I have previously written on new findings that state the common female hormone, Progesterone, has the ability to heal a patient's brain more rapidly than with current treatment alone. But I recently found an article online about a doctor from Atlanta who has been studying this theory for the past 40 years, and his thoughts and insights intrigued me.
In the early 1960s, Dr. Donald G. Stein would study how a rat's body would respond to brain tests and quickly noticed a trend of faster healing time in his female patients than in the males. Dr. Stein believed that Progesterone might actually protect and heal injured brains. His work helped overturn medical orthodoxy that states that brain tissue, once injured, stays that way.
Dr. Stein is now planning, with colleagues, to test this hypothesis on human patients over the next several years. Before progesterone can be approved as a treatment, Dr. Stein's findings must be proved in a larger study of humans. Dr. Stein and his Emory team have applied for funds to do a 1,000-patient study, which will give the definitive word.
You can read more on Dr. Stein's story and research study here.
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09.25.07
Posted in Brain Injury Resources & Links at 2:39 pm by Last
At the age of 16, Daniel Windheim suffered a traumatic brain injury during a car accident, which left him in a coma for weeks before he was able to regain consciousness. Almost thirty years later, Daniel and his mother Marjorie are working to educate people about traumatic brain injuries through a new book they have authored titled, It's Not All Black & White: A Survivor's View of Life.
This book, which for Daniel and Marjorie serves as an autobiography of the past thirty years, is meant to assist those who have experienced similar situations in their lives. The book is a composite journal, advice piece and gathering of poetry discussing life from the perspective of a parent, and survivor.
You can read more on Daniel's story and their new book here.
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09.24.07
Posted in Brain Injury News at 1:08 pm by Last
In recent years, the Medicare Secondary Payer Act has wreaked havoc upon States Workers’ Compensation Systems. Worse still, injured workers have suffered from intolerable delays and onerous new regulations before they can resolve their claims often waiting a year, even more. CMS and their contractors refuse to admit they are overwhelmed and incompetent to handle the workload as has been cited by the General Accounting office. Clearly a change is needed. A Bill now before Congress can bring much needed relief for injured working people. It is HR 2549 (PDF) entitled: “Medicare Secondary Payer and Workers’ Compensation Settlement Agreements Act of 2007".
This bipartisan proposal will exempt workers’ compensation settlements less than $250,000 or those settlements with a present value of less than $250,000. It includes a built-in escalator for future settlements which will raise the $250,000 floor over time. This legislation also provides an alternative to the set-aside process for settlements larger than $250,000 by creating a safe harbor set-aside amount of 10% of the settlement. It will also allow for direct payment to Medicare of the set-aside amount in lieu of administration of the trust. The Bill provides a clear process for appeals from any determination. It also requires Medicare to recognize and be bound by decisions on issues of compensability by the various States Workers’ Compensation Courts and Administrations. This law, if passed, will also require Medicare to respond to conditional payment requests within 60 days.
Those that would argue that this Bill provides a windfall to the insurance industry are missing the point. It is the worker who suffers the delays in receiving compensation for injuries wrought by Medicare’s ineffective administration. Passage of this legislation will clear the backlog in the State’s workers’ compensation systems and allow workers’ to make decisions concerning their pending cases in a more predictable and certain environment without fear of being subjected years later to disruptions in benefits.
Arthur H. Kravitz is a Shareholder in the Workers’ Compensation Group of my firm and he is an outstanding advocate who works on behalf of injured working people.
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