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The “social competence” of people recovering from brain injuries can be boosted by animal-assisted therapies, a study shows.
Litigation and case management includes working with clients who have had life-changing injuries that may have been caused by anything from a car accident, through to medical malpractice and negligence. Innova specialises in designing and installing specialist equipment like ceiling track hoist systems and hydrotherapy pools as part of home adaptations. Case management specialist Jason Fulcher joined Innova at the beginning of February and will work
The Coach House will accommodate 11 adults with acquired brain injuries who need long- term rehabilitation and residential care. The Coach House was officially opened at a ribbon-cutting ceremony performed by Liam Prior, a brain injury survivor. He was the first person to move into The Richardson Partnership for Care’s adjacent home, The Mews, back in December 2010. Liam has since moved out into his own flat, but keeps in touch with the team at The Mews. The opening was attended by around 40 brain injury professionals.
“My head’s like a patchwork quilt under there,” says Wendy, an inmate at HM Prison Drake Hall in Staffordshire. “He beat me bad, bad, bad... I was just knocked out, unconscious, so many times.” Before slipping into the criminal justice system, Wendy suffered domestic violence in a four-year relationship. She is now part of a damning statistic; more than six in 10 female offenders have a history of acquired brain injury (AB)).
The letter has been signed by 114 professionals, most of which are practitioners and in leadership roles at private, public and third sector brain injury-related organisations. Much of the letter points to a lack of knowledge and understanding of acquired brain injury (ABI) underpinning the Code of Practice. This, it explains, causes numerous challenges in terms of identifying, assessing and managing brain injuries.
Naidex, which is free to attend at the NEC on Tuesday and Wednesday (26 & 27), features a range of speaker sessions relevant to professionals, carers and patients. Topics up for discussion include various ways homes can be adapted to better support independent living – from kitchen and bathroom alterations, to assistive technology installations. Other issues which may be relevant to neuro-rehab professionals include innovations in terms of evidencing the value of rehabilitation services and the use of virtual reality in rehab. Managing sleep, stress and anger and making seemingly inaccessible parts of the great outdoors accessible are also art of a busy programme delivered from multiple seminar stages.
Also high on the agenda are brain stimulation, diagnostics and mental health; with organisers expecting around 3,500 neurologists, speech and language therapists, physiotherapists, clinicians, rehab specialists and hospital trust representatives to attend. The convention, at the NEC, is billed as the only trade show in Europe for brain and spinal experts and will feature over 200 exhibitors. Among them will be those offering new and emerging approaches to rehabilitation, with a range of innovative product and services firms.
Spinal cord injury affects hundreds of thousands of people worldwide, with no treatments currently available.Healing is hindered by the lack of nerve regeneration in the injured spinal cord due to factors such as inflammation and glial scarring.
Neuroscientists have found that patients born without the CCR5 gene recover better from mild stroke than patients with it. US university UCLA teamed up with Israeli researchers to study the missing gene’s effect on brain function. CCR5 plays multiple roles in the body and is known as the gene which unlocks the cellular doorway that the HIV virus enters to infect the immune system. It is the same gene that Chinese scientists reportedly altered with a genetic engineering technique known as CRISPR to genetically modify human embryos.
Researchers at the University of Utah Health and University of Washington found that paclitaxel, a cancer drug approved by the US body the FDA, offers protection to mice after experiencing mild traumatic brain injury (TBI). Paclitaxel is a chemotherapy drug used to treat several types of cancer and works by stabilising microtubules; the microscopic support beams that give cells shape and offer a mechanism for molecules to move through the cell’s cytoplasm. Researchers theorised that the drug could also stabilise the support framework inside neurons damaged by head impacts.
