Traumatic Brain Injury In Combat Veterans

This study uses secondary research in order to make connections between ideas and concepts that can illuminate the topic. Through search of databases and online book resources, the development of a rich foundation of resources can help to explore the subject matter. Using keywords to define the search, the literature can be used in order to determine how connections can be made between PTSD and TBI. Once the literature was accumulated and reviewed, the information from those works was put into context with the research questions and concepts were developed by creating connections between those works. This essay will therefore focus on the existing body of knowledge that has addressed the concepts of PTSD in details. Specifically, I would draw a keen and focused comparison or analysis between the effects of brain damage and the consequences or effects of PTSD, the level of damage and mitigative roles to combat the situation.

Traumatic brain injury is any damage caused to the brain. Individuals with TBI may show aphasia-like symptoms, yet the characteristics of TBI include mostly cognitive processes deficits. Those characteristics include disrupt orientation, attention, memory, visual processing, and executive functions problems. Penitents with TBI experience a blackout that can last anywhere between a few minutes up to months and usually wake up confused and disoriented. They do not have any recollection of the events that occurred. In addition to the common characteristics mentioned earlier, TBI patients exhibit communication deficits that relate to poor cognitive functioning such as problems with word finding, grammatical, spelling, reading, and writing. The cause of TBI is very straightforward, unlike SLI or ASD. Any injury to the head, for example motor vehicle accidents, falls, blast trauma, and more, can cause a TBI. These in turn can cause damage to multiple areas of the brain and impair motor, speech, language, and cognitive functions as discussed. It is important to note that unlike ASD that usually

Common causes include sports injuries, bicycle accidents, car accidents, and falls, the latter two being the most frequent causes among adults.[3] In addition to a blow to the head, concussion may be caused by acceleration forces without a direct impact, and on the battlefield, MTBI is a potential consequence of nearby explosions.[4] It is not clear exactly what damage is done and how the symptoms are caused, but stretching of axons and changes in ion

Battling war is something a Veteran knows all too well, but battling the demons in their mind after the war is something that they have to learn how to cope with. One of the most mentioned issues that Veterans face today is a disorder called combat post-traumatic stress disorder. Combat PTSD can easily be defined as a disorder that affects the mental state of the armed forces service member that has been through a difficult or shocking experience during their time served in the military. Experiencing war is not something that everyone can relate to, but it is something that can affect a

Anyone can suffer from PTSD, but more veterans go through events leading to PTSD in comparison to the general population, due to what they have to endure during a deployment. Patients often relive the traumatic event through flashbacks and nightmares. They often have trouble sleeping and separating there self from the traumatic event or events that has taking place in their life (Iribarren, Prolo, Neagos, & Chiappelli, 2005). There are stages as to how PTSD develops. After the person has experienced the traumatic event the often will become estranged and detach themselves from others. They can then suffer from depression, problems with memory and cognition and may turn to substance

Traumatic brain injury in general is characterized by the changes in brain function due to some sort of a biomechanical force induced by either directly or indirectly as a hit or blow to the head (Facts and Prevention, 2015). Mild traumatic brain injury, which will be considered as equivalent term with concussion, was defined by the International Conference on Concussion in Sport as a complex pathophysiological process induced by biomechanical forces (Mccrory et al., 2013). This penetrating head injury will disrupt the normal function of the brain. The cause of sports-related brain injury can be induced by a direct or indirect blow to the head. Injury can also be caused by the force of impulse due to impacts on other parts of the body being

Traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) in the military are a tangible threat to the men and women of the United States military. Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have created a spotlight on this injury, as the “signature injury”. Specific criteria makeup the definition of a TBI, which is certain symptoms and severity levels of those symptoms. Due to the capacity of this injury, the Department of Defense (DoD) and Congress have created mandates, along with treatment methods, and the ability to achieve an end goal of aiding an individual’s complete recovery.

Although the symptoms had not yet been titled Post Traumatic Stress Disorder Vietnam had a lot to do with the classification of the psychological trauma on the human brain. The returning veterans were a heavy part of the process in

Homemade explosives are the arsenals of choice by the terrorists not just around the world but also in their own backyards as seen in the recent war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thanks to the hard work of our Department of Defense, many of our soldiers are surviving these blasts due to improvements made to their uniforms and armor. Even though, we have been able to quickly identify and treat their visible injuries; we tend to overlook the more traumatic brain injuries and disorder these soldiers face when they return home to their families. However, the U.S. department of Defense and Veterans Health Administration have raised the awareness of promptly identifying the disabling symptoms of these injuries that may negatively affect the quality of life of our brothers and sisters that sacrifice their lives for our freedom. PTSD is a complicated disorder that affects veterans in general. The department of Veterans Affairs is devoted to provide the best care for our veterans that are diagnosed with this terrible disorder.

According to the Center for Disease Control, traumatic brain injuries contribute to about 30% of all injury deaths. Traumatic brain injuries are classified as “severe” or “mild”. The most common type of TBI is mild and called a concussion. The CDC estimates 2.8 billion emergency

The first study due for consideration is that by Truedau et al, published in The Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences in 1998. The study centers on the aforementioned overlap between sufferers of PTSD and sufferers of traumatic brain injury in order to determine accurate ways of screening for the latter of these conditions. The study presents a quantitative assessment of specific medical screening results in order to produce an empirically sound mode of predicting some of the negative repercussions of untreated traumatic brain injury. According to Trudeau et al (1998), "combat veterans with a remote history of blast injury have persistent electroencephalographic features of traumatic brain injury as well as attentional problems. The authors hypothesize that these constitute a

Mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) has gained considerable notice in recent years since the Global War on Terrorism. High percentages of service members surviving combat-related injuries are now battling the long-lasting effects and associated medical morbidities of brain trauma. Nearly 1.6 million service members deployed in Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) through June 30, 2007 (Defense Manpower Data Center ). While percentages of those deployed sustaining mTBI are only approximations and may underestimate prevalence of injury and underscore the subsequent impact of postconcussive symptoms, as many as 12-35% of those with exposure to combat are estimated to have experienced an mTBI (Schneiderman, Braver, & Kang, 2008 ; Hoge, et al., 2008 ). Moreover, an estimated 25,000 military personnel sustained an mTBI in 2014 alone, as reported by the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center (DVBIC, 2015). MTBI has a

Traumatic brain injury affects people from all walks of life. Form military personal to the elderly that get injured when they fall or even athletes in relation to the injuries they acquire. Traumatic brain injury progressively leads to complex pathophysiological events that may lead neurodegenerative complications. For those that have experienced traumatic brain damage are more susceptible for the development of diseases such as Alzheimer’s, dementia, epilepsy, posttraumatic stress disorder, and neuropsychiatric disorder. The progression of these diseases can occur in a span of a few weeks, months, or even decades after trauma, so it is important to look over the underlying pathophysiology that traumatic brain injury can cause after the injury

Brody and his colleagues explored this hypothesis. Dr, Brody’s team previously used diffusion tensor imaging (DTI), an advanced form of MRI which revealed significant abnormalities in brain consistent with traumatic axonal injury in blast-related TBI patients. On a separate study, the group used module-based graph theoretic analysis of resting-state functional MRI (fMRI) data which revealed altered between-module connectivity in the TBI patients compared to control group who had blast exposures without a diagnosis of TBI. Overall, this technique showed that with high quality scan it will provide potentially useful information for blast-related TBI. Blast plus impact TBI patients also showed higher rates of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and depression but not cognitive impairments compared to non-blust concussive patients with

TBI termed as Traumatic Brain Injury is an intracranial injury that often occurs when an external force is applied to the brain. TBI survivors encounter changes in cognition, sensorimotor function and personality. Incidents caused by rapid change in acceleration, blast waves, crush or penetration by a projectile. This could result in temporary or permanent impairment of cognitive, physical and psychological functions. In TBI, the primary injury is an external force, that induces mechanical tissue deformation, resulting in necrotic cell death, shearing and tearing of the vessels, neurons, glial and initiation of secondary injury. A primary injury would basically result in the immediate rupture of the brain tissue. A secondary injury involves