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Ft. Carson TBI Study is Military's Biggest
April 10, 2007 5:41 PM
A new study from Ft. Carson suggests that nearly 20% of soldiers who deploy to Iraq will come home with Traumatic Brain Injuries.
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Traumatic Brain Injuries, or TBIs, are most frequently the result of being exposed to an explosive blast, like the roadside bombs that account for most of the injuries soldiers suffer in Iraq. Improvements in armor, for both individual soldiers and the vehicles they ride in, have resulted in a dramatic drop in battlefield fatalities compared to previous wars, but there's been an increase in injuries, like TBI. Captain Matthew Staton struggles with one.
STATON: I have severe short-term memory issues, very strenuous on my family. My wife, unfortunately has a very hard time with it. Sometimes she feels like she has to mother me. I can go from one task to another, and completely have forgotten what I was doing.
WHITNEY: Other symptoms include irritability, headaches, dizzyness and inability to sleep.
STATON: It's depressing, it's frustrating, it's aggravating, it's disheartening. I mean, I'm a 30-year-old man, it's hard.
WHITNEY: The Army is trying to get a handle on the number of soldiers like Staton who are suffering from TBI, and to figure out how to treat their condition. Today, Col. John Cho, the doctor in charge of medical operations at Ft. Carson, announced some results from what he says is the military's longest-term study of Traumatic Brain Injury in soldiers returning from Iraq. It was initiated at Ft. Carson almost two years ago.
CHO: And what we found was that the incident rate of mild Traumatic Brain Injury, here at Ft. Carson is 178 per 1,000 returning soldiers, so that's 17.8%.
WHITNEY: Those numbers are the result of Ft. Carson screening 13,440 soldiers from three different brigades and a few smaller units, deployed at various times. Importantly, Dr. Cho says, Ft. Carson screened soldiers both immediately after they returned from combat, and then again three to six months later.
CHO: When you take a look at the entire population of the 13,440 soldiers that we looked at, only 9% of soldiers return with any symptoms. That's 91% of soldiers have no symptoms related to TBI.
WHITNEY: That number roughly doubled three to six months later. Dr. Cho says researchers are not sure why. In fact, he says, there's a lot doctors don't know about Traumatic Brain Injury.
CHO: We do not understand the pathophysiology or the biochemical makeup of mild traumatic brain injury, we just do not. And if we did, then we could start with a cure, if you will, for traumatic brain injury.
WHITNEY: Not understanding the pathopysiology or biochemical makeup of the condition means that there are no physical tests, like an MRI or brain scan, that can tell doctors who has a TBI and who doesn't. It also means doctors don't know how to fix whatever it is that causes the symptoms that leave 13% of soldiers who get a TBI undeployable.
Col. Cho says doctors are left to treat TBI in much the same way they treat the common cold, they don't know how to cure it, but they can help patients feel better.
CHO: We treat the symptoms. So if a soldier presents with a headache, if they have irritability, we give them low dose (unclear). If they cannot sleep, we give them a little medication to help him sleep.
WHITNEY: One thing doctors do know, is that TBI appears to be different to the more common concussions that civilian doctors are familiar with. He says concussions typically don't persist for as long as a TBI, but researchers aren't sure how long it really takes to recover from a TBI, or the overall recovery rate.
But Captain Staton, who's undergoing therapy to help improve his memory and mitigate other TBI symptoms, says he's been told not to be in a hurry to get better.
STATON: Unfortunately with TBI, this is not a quick fix. With therapy and everything, this takes somewhere around three to five years to recover, if you can recover back to where you were at before the injury. This is not a quick fix.
WHITNEY: Staton, who also suffered a gunshot wound in Iraq, and a car accident upon returning home, is in the process of being medically discharged from the Army.
TBI researchers at Ft. Carson say their study is far from complete, and that they're working with other Army bases and research organizations to come up with standard protocols for both diagnosing and treating Traumatic Brain Injury.
Posted by Eric Whitney on April 10, 2007 5:41 PM | Permalink
