H
Harry Hope
Guest
"When the sound wave moves through the brain, it seems to cause little
gas bubbles to form," he said.
"When they pop, it leaves a cavity. So you are littering people's
brains with these little holes."
Almost as daunting as treating TBI is the volume of such injuries
coming out of Iraq.
Macedo cited the estimates, gleaned at seminars with VA doctors, that
as many as one-third of all combat forces are at risk of TBI.
Military physicians have learned that significant neurological
injuries should be suspected in any troops exposed to a blast, even if
they were far from the explosion.
Indeed, soldiers walking away from IED blasts have discovered that
they often suffer from memory loss, short attention spans, muddled
reasoning, headaches, confusion, anxiety, depression and irritability.
What's baffling is the Pentagon's failure to work with Congress to
provide a steady stream of funding for research on TBIs.
Meanwhile, the high-profile firings of top commanders at Walter Reed
have shed light on the woefully inadequate treatment for troops.
..........................................................................................................
Most of the families of our wounded that I have interviewed months, if
not years, after the injury say the same thing:
"Someone should have told us that with these closed-head injuries,
things would not really get all that much better."
Now in its fifth year, the Iraq conflict is not a war of death for
U.S. troops nearly so much as it is a war of disabilities.
The symbol of this battle is not the cemetery but the orthopedic ward
and the neurosurgical unit.
The men and women inside those units have come home alive but missing
arms and legs, many unable to see or hear or remember who they were
before being hit by a roadside bomb.
From The Washington Post, 4/8/07:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/06/AR2007040601821.html
WAR'S NEW WOUNDS
A Shock Wave of Brain Injuries
By Ronald Glasser
Sunday, April 8, 2007; Page B01
"We can save you. But you might not be what you were."
Neurosurgeon, Combat Support Hospital, Balad, Iraq
This is the new physics of war.
Three 155mm shells, linked together and combined with 100 pounds of
Semtex plastic explosive, covered by canisters of butane or barrels of
gasoline, can upend a 70-ton tank, destroy a Humvee or blow an engine
block through the hood of a truck.
Those deadly ingredients form the signature weapon of the war in Iraq:
improvised explosive devices, known by anybody who watches the news as
IEDs.
Some of the impact of these roadside bombs is brutally clear:
Troops are maimed by projectiles, poisoned by clouds of bacteria-laced
debris and burned by post-blast flames.
But the IEDs have added a new dimension to battlefield injuries:
wounds and even deaths among troops who have no external signs of
trauma but whose brains have been severely damaged.
Iraq has brought back one of the worst afflictions of World War I
trench warfare: shell shock.
The brain of a soldier exposed to a roadside bomb is shocked, truly.
About 1,800 U.S. troops, according to the Department of Veterans
Affairs, are now suffering from traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) caused
by penetrating wounds.
But neurologists worry that hundreds of thousands more -- at least 30
percent of the troops who've engaged in active combat for four months
or longer in Iraq and Afghanistan -- are at risk of potentially
disabling neurological disorders from the blast waves of IEDs and
mortars, all without suffering a scratch.
For the first time, the U.S. military is treating more head injuries
than chest or abdominal wounds, and it is ill-equipped to do so.
According to a July 2005 estimate from Walter Reed Army Medical
Center, two-thirds of all soldiers wounded in Iraq who don't
immediately return to duty have traumatic brain injuries.
Here's why IEDS carry such hidden danger.
The detonation of any powerful explosive generates a blast wave of
high pressure that spreads out at 1,600 feet per second from the point
of explosion and travels hundreds of yards.
The lethal blast wave is a two-part assault that rattles the brain
against the skull.
The initial shock wave of very high pressure is followed closely by
the "secondary wind":
a huge volume of displaced air flooding back into the area, again
under high pressure.
No helmet or armor can defend against such a massive wave front.
It is these sudden and extreme differences in pressures -- routinely
1,000 times greater than atmospheric pressure -- that lead to
significant neurological injury.
Blast waves cause severe concussions, resulting in loss of
consciousness and obvious neurological deficits such as blindness,
deafness and mental retardation.
Blast waves causing TBIs can leave a 19-year-old private who could
easily run a six-minute mile unable to stand or even to think.
Another problem is that these blast-related brain injuries differ from
other severe head traumas, and the complexity of treating returning
troops with "closed-head" injuries is taxing an already overburdened
military health-care system.
There is not a neurosurgeon who works in a trauma unit anywhere in the
United States who doesn't know what to do when an ambulance brings in
a biker who has suffered a severe head injury in a highway accident.
The standard care involves using calcium channel blockers to protect
damaged nerve cells against further injury, intravenous diuretics to
control brain swelling and, if the swelling becomes too great, removal
of the top of the skull to allow the brain to swell without increasing
neurological damage.
This is what surgeons did in the case of ABC News anchor Bob Woodruff,
who suffered severe brain injuries from an IED blast in Baghdad last
year.
All this works with the common types of severe head injuries, but it
does not work with brains damaged by shock waves.
Despite the usual interventions and treatments, the majority of
blast-injury patients who have neurological damage do not fully
recover.
________________________________________________
And the spoiled AWOL brat probably doesn't give it a second thought.
Harry
gas bubbles to form," he said.
"When they pop, it leaves a cavity. So you are littering people's
brains with these little holes."
Almost as daunting as treating TBI is the volume of such injuries
coming out of Iraq.
Macedo cited the estimates, gleaned at seminars with VA doctors, that
as many as one-third of all combat forces are at risk of TBI.
Military physicians have learned that significant neurological
injuries should be suspected in any troops exposed to a blast, even if
they were far from the explosion.
Indeed, soldiers walking away from IED blasts have discovered that
they often suffer from memory loss, short attention spans, muddled
reasoning, headaches, confusion, anxiety, depression and irritability.
What's baffling is the Pentagon's failure to work with Congress to
provide a steady stream of funding for research on TBIs.
Meanwhile, the high-profile firings of top commanders at Walter Reed
have shed light on the woefully inadequate treatment for troops.
..........................................................................................................
Most of the families of our wounded that I have interviewed months, if
not years, after the injury say the same thing:
"Someone should have told us that with these closed-head injuries,
things would not really get all that much better."
Now in its fifth year, the Iraq conflict is not a war of death for
U.S. troops nearly so much as it is a war of disabilities.
The symbol of this battle is not the cemetery but the orthopedic ward
and the neurosurgical unit.
The men and women inside those units have come home alive but missing
arms and legs, many unable to see or hear or remember who they were
before being hit by a roadside bomb.
From The Washington Post, 4/8/07:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/06/AR2007040601821.html
WAR'S NEW WOUNDS
A Shock Wave of Brain Injuries
By Ronald Glasser
Sunday, April 8, 2007; Page B01
"We can save you. But you might not be what you were."
Neurosurgeon, Combat Support Hospital, Balad, Iraq
This is the new physics of war.
Three 155mm shells, linked together and combined with 100 pounds of
Semtex plastic explosive, covered by canisters of butane or barrels of
gasoline, can upend a 70-ton tank, destroy a Humvee or blow an engine
block through the hood of a truck.
Those deadly ingredients form the signature weapon of the war in Iraq:
improvised explosive devices, known by anybody who watches the news as
IEDs.
Some of the impact of these roadside bombs is brutally clear:
Troops are maimed by projectiles, poisoned by clouds of bacteria-laced
debris and burned by post-blast flames.
But the IEDs have added a new dimension to battlefield injuries:
wounds and even deaths among troops who have no external signs of
trauma but whose brains have been severely damaged.
Iraq has brought back one of the worst afflictions of World War I
trench warfare: shell shock.
The brain of a soldier exposed to a roadside bomb is shocked, truly.
About 1,800 U.S. troops, according to the Department of Veterans
Affairs, are now suffering from traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) caused
by penetrating wounds.
But neurologists worry that hundreds of thousands more -- at least 30
percent of the troops who've engaged in active combat for four months
or longer in Iraq and Afghanistan -- are at risk of potentially
disabling neurological disorders from the blast waves of IEDs and
mortars, all without suffering a scratch.
For the first time, the U.S. military is treating more head injuries
than chest or abdominal wounds, and it is ill-equipped to do so.
According to a July 2005 estimate from Walter Reed Army Medical
Center, two-thirds of all soldiers wounded in Iraq who don't
immediately return to duty have traumatic brain injuries.
Here's why IEDS carry such hidden danger.
The detonation of any powerful explosive generates a blast wave of
high pressure that spreads out at 1,600 feet per second from the point
of explosion and travels hundreds of yards.
The lethal blast wave is a two-part assault that rattles the brain
against the skull.
The initial shock wave of very high pressure is followed closely by
the "secondary wind":
a huge volume of displaced air flooding back into the area, again
under high pressure.
No helmet or armor can defend against such a massive wave front.
It is these sudden and extreme differences in pressures -- routinely
1,000 times greater than atmospheric pressure -- that lead to
significant neurological injury.
Blast waves cause severe concussions, resulting in loss of
consciousness and obvious neurological deficits such as blindness,
deafness and mental retardation.
Blast waves causing TBIs can leave a 19-year-old private who could
easily run a six-minute mile unable to stand or even to think.
Another problem is that these blast-related brain injuries differ from
other severe head traumas, and the complexity of treating returning
troops with "closed-head" injuries is taxing an already overburdened
military health-care system.
There is not a neurosurgeon who works in a trauma unit anywhere in the
United States who doesn't know what to do when an ambulance brings in
a biker who has suffered a severe head injury in a highway accident.
The standard care involves using calcium channel blockers to protect
damaged nerve cells against further injury, intravenous diuretics to
control brain swelling and, if the swelling becomes too great, removal
of the top of the skull to allow the brain to swell without increasing
neurological damage.
This is what surgeons did in the case of ABC News anchor Bob Woodruff,
who suffered severe brain injuries from an IED blast in Baghdad last
year.
All this works with the common types of severe head injuries, but it
does not work with brains damaged by shock waves.
Despite the usual interventions and treatments, the majority of
blast-injury patients who have neurological damage do not fully
recover.
________________________________________________
And the spoiled AWOL brat probably doesn't give it a second thought.
Harry
