News & Headlines

The surest way for motorcycle riders to avoid joining the rapidly growing ranks of fatality statistics — up 144 percent since 1997, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration — is to wear proper head protection. A helmet increases the chances of survival in an accident by 37 percent, the safety agency says.

IEDs have now added a new dimension to battlefield injuries.Doctors are seeing an increase in injuries and even deaths among troops who have no external signs of trauma but whose brains have been severely damaged.

There are no official statistics on how many marriages break up after veterans return home from the Iraq war changed. But when a vet returns with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or Traumatic Brain Injury, it can put a marriage to the test. The VA Medical Center in La Jolla estimates almost 30 percent of veterans they enroll are diagnosed with PTSD, and 8 percent have TBI.

Brain-damaged by a roadside bomb while covering the war in Iraq in 2006, television newsman Bob Woodruff retold his poignant story Tuesday to a packed Salem State College audience, flanked by his wife, Lee, who shared the emotional hardships she endured during the recovery process.

Each year, hundreds of thousands of children who hit their heads undergo CT scans to rule out the possibility of serious brain injury, but a new study has found that many of the high-radiation scans are unnecessary.

The Daily Telegraph today reported that, "people lying in vegetative states in hospital can still learn" and that this "breakthrough could suggest which patients have the potential to recover from their injuries or illness."

Parents and step-parents who inflict head injuries on their infants are virtually never convicted of the crime unless they plead guilty, a study shows. In most cases prosecutions are never launched.

US Army Major Matt St. Laurent had a long drive back to New Hampshire, and he was on an early flight out of Manchester to Washington the next morning, but he still didn't want to leave Fenway Park the other night.

Cpl. John McClellan has trouble remembering names and uses a Global Positioning System to find his way on unfamiliar streets. Three years ago, he was shot through the head by an enemy sniper while serving as a Marine in Iraq.

Ravens center Matt Birk has agreed to donate his brain and spinal cord tissue to a widening study of brain trauma.

Soldiers returning home from Afghanistan and Iraq suffering from a high rate of traumatic brain injury due to exposure to explosive blasts have prompted research projects to determine exactly how brain injury occurs during an explosion in which direct impact to the head does not occur.

New research on the effects of blast waves could lead to an enhanced understanding of head injuries and improved military helmet design.

"Senator Coburn, we need help," she says. "My husband has traumatic brain injury. His health insurance will not cover him to eat and drink. And what I need to know is, are you going to help him, where he can eat and drink? We left the nursing home, and they told us we were on our own."

Attention players, parents, coaches, trainers, and doctors. The injury experts have a message. You've probably heard it before, but the moment is right to hear it again: If young athletes want to preserve their brains after a head injury, however minor, the typical jock advice to suck it up and get back in the game is not only bad, it's potentially life-threatening.

Concussions, whether from an accident, sporting event, or combat, can lead to permanent loss of higher level mental processes.

For the past 34 years, Snohomish's family-owned Delta Rehabilitation Center has specialized in caring for patients — as young as 14 — with traumatic brain injuries.

A blood test can now be used to detect brain damage in amateur boxers. Deterioration of nerve cells seems to occur even after a two-month break from boxing. This is shown in a new study from the Sahlgrenska Academy.

Less than 48 hours had passed since David Wright took a 94-mph fastball off his helmet. And yet, when he returned to Citi Field on Monday, he didn't have a bruise. He wasn't wearing a bandage. He wasn't holding an ice pack.

Ed Johnston never saw the puck coming. His friend, Bobby Orr, teed it up during warm-ups, and it hit Johnston on the side of the head.

She thought it was a simple fall, something a little rest would heal. But, within one hour, a Richardson woman was in surgery and fighting for her life.

The concept is as simple as it is enticing: Take stem cells, which can develop into any type of cell, and turn them into replacements for body parts that are damaged or causing disease.

Scott Bolzan says that when he woke up at Scottsdale Healthcare after slipping and hitting his head, a pretty blond woman embraced him. He had no idea that she was Joan, his wife of 24 years. He forgot his life on Dec. 17, 2008, and the memories still haven't come back.

Imagine you're in the waiting room of a trauma center, cold, confused, concerned and scared. Your loved one was transported there earlier after a serious accident. Questions abound: What is happening to my loved one? Will he survive? What's next?

"I woke up, just like any other day. My whole body was killing me. My back really hurt like I had been frozen. It was apparent that I was in a hospital, because there was a TV hanging on the wall. There was a calendar with days marked off, and it was mid-December."

BrainScope Company, Inc. today announced its first device, the ZOOM-100DC brain electrical activity data collection system, has been cleared for marketing by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The ZOOM-100DC is an advanced 8-channel, portable, handheld electroencephalogram (EEG) device capable of recording and displaying EEG waveforms and providing conventional EEG measures displayed in tables.

When Maryland native Keith Buckman regained consciousness in a Bethesda hospital last July, he knew he would never again play football, basketball or soccer, the sports he had loved growing up in Forestville. He barely survived a 2008 suicide bombing in Iraq's Anbar province that killed 25 people, including three fellow Marines. His legs and one arm were shattered.

Too many people associate homelessness with substance abuse, laziness, craziness, and extreme societal rejection, but one survey has reported that over 50 percent of the homeless in Toronto, Canada are afflicted with traumatic brain injury.

When a Vermont state senator was accused last week of improper behavior in a public place, a complicated conversation began about the intersection of politics and disabilities.

Casey Owens wasn't expected to live after he lost both legs in Iraq. But he made it out of a military vehicle alive and to Bethesda Naval Hospital where CBS News national security correspondent David Martin first met him in October of 2004.

Intracranial bleeding (IB) is a common and serious consequence of traumatic brain injury. IB can be classified according to the location into: epidural haemorrhage, subdural haemorrhage, intraparenchymal haemorrhage, and subarachnoid haemorrhage (SAH).

Although Alaska has one of the highest numbers of people serving in the military per capita, Thursday's summit on veterans' issues was the first of its kind.

Vermont State Senator and candidate for lieutenant governor Ed Flanagan is facing scrutiny. It stems from an allegation of inappropriate behavior at the Burlington YMCA. There are also broader concerns about Flanagan's mental fitness ever since he suffered a traumatic brain injury in a car accident four years ago.

The causes of severe traumatic brain injury vary by age and other demographic characteristics. Mortality after trauma is higher for elderly than younger patients.

The views expressed by Hoge and colleagues in their Perspective article (April 16 issue) on the role of mild traumatic brain injury (TBI) in postdeployment dysfunction are not upheld by the clinical experience of most experts who provide care.

Tim Juneman went to a Department of Veterans Affairs psychiatrist in January 2008 to talk about his recurrent thoughts of suicide. The 25-year-old Washington State University student was an Iraq war veteran who had survived a year of tough fighting that left him with a twin diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury.

The future mix of homeless veterans was signaled here last weekend at Stand Down, an annual three-day tent city that provides respite and aid to former members of the armed forces whose lives have collapsed.