Pentagon admits postponing brain screenings

March 18, 2008
Pentagon admits postponing brain screenings

The Pentagon has admitted that it delayed introducing a routine screening of troops returning from Iraq for mild brain injuries because it feared that the extent of the problem could mushroom to the scale of the Gulf War syndrome after the first Iraq war.

The head of the Pentagon's medical assessments division has told USA Today that he wanted to avoid another controversy as potentially huge as Gulf War syndrome.

Bomb Blasts Cause Long Term Brain Injuries

September 23, 2007
Bomb Blasts Cause Long Term Brain Injuries

In the animal studies, scientists say they have found a fundamentally different wound than the "brain concussion" historically associated with undetected brain injuries. A concussion, essentially a bruise on the brain, is a wound that can heal over time, doctors say.

The newly discovered brain damage at the cellular level can be permanent — especially after repeated exposures to blasts — and lead to lasting neurological deterioration, Ling and Cernak say.

Thousands of GIs cope with traumatic brain injury

September 9, 2007

Thousands of GIs cope with traumatic brain injury

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - The war in Iraq is not over, but one legacy is already here in this city and others across America: an epidemic of brain-damaged soldiers.

Thousands of troops have been diagnosed with traumatic brain injury, or TBI. These blast-caused head injuries are so different from the ones doctors are used to seeing from falls and car crashes that treating them is as much faith as it is science.

Brain injuries plague Carson GIs

April 11, 2007
Brain injuries plague Carson GIs

Fort Carson - Nearly two in 10 soldiers who have returned to Fort Carson from Iraq in the past two years have suffered a traumatic brain injury, according to an ongoing study by medical experts at the base.

Since June 2005, 13,400 soldiers in three brigades have been screened for TBI. Fort Carson has found that 178 of every 1,000 soldiers screened had a traumatic brain injury.

TBI is considered the "signature wound" of the Iraq war. Better body armor and Kevlar have kept alive soldiers who might have died in earlier wars. But exposure to multiple blasts and rattling of the brain inside the skull have caused the hidden injuries.

Fort Carson doctors define TBI the same way as the American Congress of Rehabilitative Medicine: A patient has had an injury that resulted in an alteration - but not necessarily a loss - in consciousness. A soldier who reported being dazed or disoriented after a crash or near a bomb blast might be diagnosed with TBI.