CINCINNATI, Ohio (Ivanhoe Newswire) – Traumatic brain injuries, or TBI, can be life-changing. It can be the result of a bump, blow or jolt to the head. Many are caused by a fall, car crash, sports injury or gunshot wound. They can disrupt how you think, how you feel, your behavior and even impact you physically. But did you know there is no standard practice when it comes to caring for patients with a TBI? Now, that may soon change.
The stats are staggering – three million Americans are living with traumatic brain injuries. One million people will be treated for one this year, and 50,000 people will die.
“It’s a tough injury because the patients themselves are comatose,” says Brandon Foreman, MD, in Neurocritical Care at The University of Cincinnati.
ICU patients are monitored by several machines that give valuable information on a patient’s heart rate, blood pressure, and oxygen levels, as well as functions of other organs. Now, neurocritical care doctors at The University of Cincinnati were one of the first to use a single device that collects and compares all that information and more.
“This Is our component neuromonitoring system, the CNS. And this is a portable device that goes into the hospital room with the patient,” explains Dr. Foreman.
The multimodality neuro monitor tracks vitals, plus gathers information from the patient’s brain, and tracks that information over days, even weeks.
“Because what’s happening to the patient on day one is often very different compared to what’s happening to that patient on day three,” Dr. Foreman adds.
Giving doctors a more in-depth view of what’s happening inside the brain so they can stop more damage from being done.
Dr. Foreman says, “We’re learning a lot about what those patterns look like, how individual they are, and how we can treat them in a more precise way tailored to that patient.”
Dr. Foreman says, just as important as telling physicians what’s happening inside the brain of TBI patients, doctors will have more information on what treatment patients may not need that could be harmful or add stress to the patient.
Contributors to this news report include: Marsha Lewis, Producer; Matt Goldschmidt, Videographer; Roque Correa, Editor.
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Source:
https://www.cdc.gov/traumatic-brain-injury/data-research/facts-stats/index.html
