Interview: Inside one of the world’s biggest concussion studies
Concussion is a huge concern across the US military and in sports. In 2018, 19,000 military personnel were diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury, while college athletes had an average of 10,500 concussions for past five years.
Despite the numbers, many say there’s a lack of research to inform ways that government and industry can best tackle this problem. In response, the largest prospective concussion study was formed to fill the gaps in understanding, to see what recovery from a concussion looks like in athletes and cadets. More than 44,000 people have since enrolled in the CARE (concussion assessment, research and education) consortium since its inception in 2014, across 30 universities and four military service academies across the US.
How music is helping to diagnose children with DOC
Due to advances in healthcare, more children than ever are surviving brain injuries. Some, however, may remain in a coma or with a disorder of consciousness (DOC). This can cause diagnostic, ethical and clinical challenges, and misdiagnoses can lead to inadequate care, and insufficient access to treatment, rehab, and services...
For adults with DOC, clinicians can use the Music therapy Assessment Tool for Awareness in Disorders of Consciousness (MATADOC) to better understand the patient’s recovery, but until recently, there hasn’t been anything similar for children.Acquired brain injuries can lead to language impairment. And for some children, their language may not have been fully developed before their injury. This renders language-based tests unsuitable for getting proper responses from children to gauge their needs and recovery.
“I lost so much but had to let go and move on”
A recent study by Headway found that 72 per cent of brain injury survivors feel that people in their life don't understand their memory problems, with 81 per cent reporting that their life would be improved if people had a better understanding of this complex condition.
Karl Hargreaves, 49, is just one of those people battling severe memory loss following a brain injury. He is sharing his story as part of Headway’s Memory Loss: A campaign to remember in order to raise awareness and increase understanding of life after brain injury. Years of precious memories were wiped in an instant when the father from Lincoln was involved in a road traffic collision in 2015.
Now is the time to embrace better ways of working
By Merryn Dowson, assistant psychologist and part of the team behind rehab goal-setting platform Goal Manager
A stitch in time saves nine. Rome wasn’t built in a day. The best things take time. We are all too aware that some of the most important parts of our lives have been crafted, carved and developed over months and years. Consider your education, for example: you may well have been to primary school, secondary school and then sixth form college. Perhaps you went on to do an undergraduate degree.
Stepping up the fight against alcohol-related brain injury
Alcohol-related brain injury (ARBI) is becoming more widely recognised, but specific rehab services for the condition are surprisingly rare.
With few dedicated units for patients with ARBI, many patients in need of specialist care instead find themselves in a hospital or even an elderly care home.
ARBI is characterised by prolonged cognitive impairment and changes in the brain due to chronic alcohol consumption.
A 20-year adventure in rehab robotics
Back in 2000, the world was a very different place, particularly in terms of technology. Many of the high-tech innovations we now accept as standard were not yet launched and healthcare remained one of the most traditional markets around. Yet into this climate, Hocoma launched the prototype of its pioneering Lokomat, a robotic medical device which provides repetitive and highly physiological gait training to patients, enabling even some of the most impaired to learn to walk again.
COVID-19: Life in the fast lane
A few months ago, my brother excitedly told us he was planning a trip to Holland with his friends because he thought a few days away would be a welcome break from the stresses of work. However, my sister did not share his excitement and her immediate response was to tell him not to go. When she failed to dissuade him, she told him to at least pack a face mask. This kind of response is not surprising at a time when the world has been brought to the edge of mania. There is a name for this phenomenon- ‘moral panic’. Moral panic is a concept in sociology that refers to the phenomenon of a mass of people becoming distressed about a perceived threat or social issue.
Frontal lobe paradox – how can we best help service users?
Due to the nature of hidden impairments in brain injured individuals, they may be assessed as having capacity to make their own decisions when they cannot. As a result, they can be vulnerable and find themselves in dangerous situations.
People working with brain injured service users must be aware of how this injury impacts decision making and be prepared to share and explain this to other professionals.
The Mental Capacity Act (2005) is presumably familiar to most people working with individuals with a brain injury or mental impairment.
How to be a good medico-legal expert
I’m often asked by colleagues what makes a good medico-legal expert in complex high value (multi-track) cases. It’s something I’ve thought about a lot since I started doing this kind of work and something I’ve discussed with solicitors, time and again. A commitment to the caseload Being a medical expert witness is not a trivial undertaking. People should certainly not view this work as an easy way to make money. Of course, it’s possible to make a good living, but only for people who have something valuable to offer. It’s also a competitive business, so being as good as you can be makes a big difference to the number of instructions you will receive. Like most aspects of professional life, the more you put into it the more you get out in several ways.
