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exhibit major depression, drastic mood swings, seizures, dizziness, or a changed personality. While these things can result from other causes, they can also be signs of TBI.
Glasser concurs, explaining that TBI can have a “delayed onset, or changes in behavior can be dismissed as ‘he’s out of sorts.’”
Funds and Space for TBI Care Inadequate
Just as the brain is mysterious, so is brain injury. It’s long been misunderstood and misdiagnosed, even often undiagnosed. But in the 1990s, TBI began to receive more notice, both within the military and the general population. Better acute care of brain injury has allowed more victims to survive, and improved rehabilitation (physical, occupational, and speech/cognitive) means that many survivors can recover farther than they would have in the past. Despite those advances, however, much more is needed.
In 1992, after Desert Storm, the federal government created a national center to study TBI resulting from warfare as well as care for those so injured. Known today as the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center (DVBIC), it has only one mission: “to serve active duty military, their dependents and veterans with traumatic brain injury (TBI) through state-of-the-art medical care, innovative clinical research initiatives, and educational programs.”
Funded through the Department of Defense, DVBIC is a collaboration of DoD, the Department of Veterans Affairs healthcare system (with six VA sites around the country, plus DVBIC headquarters located at Walter Reed), and one civilian partner, Virginia NeuroCare in Charlottesville, Va.
Today, these facilities are providing excellent medical care and rehabilitation services to brain-injured active-duty personnel and veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. DVBIC is also conducting various studies of brain injury and its prevention and care; one involves investigating head injuries suffered by professional football players to see if there are any similarities to military injuries.
The need may be outstripping the available beds, however. For instance, the VA hospital in Palo Alto, Calif., part of the DVBIC system, has only 24 beds. Additionally, the VA medical system currently is unprepared and underfunded to provide the long-term—even lifetime—care and services that will be needed for many of these soldiers, especially given the severity of many other injuries from Iraq, like those that have left soldiers without one or more limbs.
According to Pascrell, the Congressional Brain Injury Task Force is working closely with the DVBIC to help provide increased funding and services. He adds that all the publicity about brain-injured warfighters in the popular press has been helping the cause.
In 1996, Congress authorized the Federal TBI Program with the Traumatic Brain Injury Act, which provided federal funding to conduct expanded studies and establish innovative TBI programs around the country. The Brain Injury Association of America called it “a foundation for coordinated and balanced public policy in prevention, education, research and community-living for people living with a TBI and their families.” It was reauthorized as part of the Children’s Health Act of 2000. Tragically, funding was eliminated in the 2006 federal budget. Pascrell says a measure to restore funds has passed the House but, at the time of this writing, the Senate had not yet voted on the measure. Lux is hopeful, saying, “Scuttlebutt has it that the TBI Act will be funded.”
If funding for the TBI Act is not adequately restored, not only will civilian TBI survivors and their families suffer from lack of care, so will the military survivors no longer on active duty or those unable to access care at an appropriate VA facility. Even if they are fortunate enough to obtain coverage from a private carrier, it may not help. Many HMOs and medical insurance providers deny coverage for outpatient services so necessary for improved outcomes with TBI patients, such as cognitive therapy that helps improve mental function.
A new law will help a little: Under a new rider to Servicemembers’ Group Life Insurance, severely injured warfighters who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan will receive payments of $25,000 to $100,000. This includes those with TBI. It will be retroactive to Oct. 7, 2001, the start of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan.
TBI is society’s issue
As long as IEDs and other explosives continue to be used in Iraq (or in any war, for that matter), TBI will continue to be a problem in warfare, to one degree or another. New types of helmets in development and being tested—such as the Advanced Combat Helmet (ACH) and the special forces’ Modular Integrated Communications Helmet (MICH)—might help prevent some of the brain damage from blast waves. Yet, as Shad Meshad says, “If an explosion takes out the side of a building and kills 83 people, any type of armament won’t help.”
If there is anything at all positive in this situation, say Lux, it is that “this conflict will certainly give us a cohort of people to follow over a long period of time, for years or even decades,” so that what is learned from them might possibly help future TBI survivors or aid in strategies to prevent or lessen brain injuries.
Glasser concurs, explaining that TBI can have a “delayed onset, or changes in behavior can be dismissed as ‘he’s out of sorts.’”
Funds and Space for TBI Care Inadequate
Just as the brain is mysterious, so is brain injury. It’s long been misunderstood and misdiagnosed, even often undiagnosed. But in the 1990s, TBI began to receive more notice, both within the military and the general population. Better acute care of brain injury has allowed more victims to survive, and improved rehabilitation (physical, occupational, and speech/cognitive) means that many survivors can recover farther than they would have in the past. Despite those advances, however, much more is needed.
In 1992, after Desert Storm, the federal government created a national center to study TBI resulting from warfare as well as care for those so injured. Known today as the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center (DVBIC), it has only one mission: “to serve active duty military, their dependents and veterans with traumatic brain injury (TBI) through state-of-the-art medical care, innovative clinical research initiatives, and educational programs.”
Funded through the Department of Defense, DVBIC is a collaboration of DoD, the Department of Veterans Affairs healthcare system (with six VA sites around the country, plus DVBIC headquarters located at Walter Reed), and one civilian partner, Virginia NeuroCare in Charlottesville, Va.
Today, these facilities are providing excellent medical care and rehabilitation services to brain-injured active-duty personnel and veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan. DVBIC is also conducting various studies of brain injury and its prevention and care; one involves investigating head injuries suffered by professional football players to see if there are any similarities to military injuries.
The need may be outstripping the available beds, however. For instance, the VA hospital in Palo Alto, Calif., part of the DVBIC system, has only 24 beds. Additionally, the VA medical system currently is unprepared and underfunded to provide the long-term—even lifetime—care and services that will be needed for many of these soldiers, especially given the severity of many other injuries from Iraq, like those that have left soldiers without one or more limbs.
According to Pascrell, the Congressional Brain Injury Task Force is working closely with the DVBIC to help provide increased funding and services. He adds that all the publicity about brain-injured warfighters in the popular press has been helping the cause.
In 1996, Congress authorized the Federal TBI Program with the Traumatic Brain Injury Act, which provided federal funding to conduct expanded studies and establish innovative TBI programs around the country. The Brain Injury Association of America called it “a foundation for coordinated and balanced public policy in prevention, education, research and community-living for people living with a TBI and their families.” It was reauthorized as part of the Children’s Health Act of 2000. Tragically, funding was eliminated in the 2006 federal budget. Pascrell says a measure to restore funds has passed the House but, at the time of this writing, the Senate had not yet voted on the measure. Lux is hopeful, saying, “Scuttlebutt has it that the TBI Act will be funded.”
If funding for the TBI Act is not adequately restored, not only will civilian TBI survivors and their families suffer from lack of care, so will the military survivors no longer on active duty or those unable to access care at an appropriate VA facility. Even if they are fortunate enough to obtain coverage from a private carrier, it may not help. Many HMOs and medical insurance providers deny coverage for outpatient services so necessary for improved outcomes with TBI patients, such as cognitive therapy that helps improve mental function.
A new law will help a little: Under a new rider to Servicemembers’ Group Life Insurance, severely injured warfighters who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan will receive payments of $25,000 to $100,000. This includes those with TBI. It will be retroactive to Oct. 7, 2001, the start of Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan.
TBI is society’s issue
As long as IEDs and other explosives continue to be used in Iraq (or in any war, for that matter), TBI will continue to be a problem in warfare, to one degree or another. New types of helmets in development and being tested—such as the Advanced Combat Helmet (ACH) and the special forces’ Modular Integrated Communications Helmet (MICH)—might help prevent some of the brain damage from blast waves. Yet, as Shad Meshad says, “If an explosion takes out the side of a building and kills 83 people, any type of armament won’t help.”
If there is anything at all positive in this situation, say Lux, it is that “this conflict will certainly give us a cohort of people to follow over a long period of time, for years or even decades,” so that what is learned from them might possibly help future TBI survivors or aid in strategies to prevent or lessen brain injuries.
