brain injury

When surgeons need to deliver a payload directly to a patient's brain, it usually involves a rather invasive procedure that opens the skull and leaves the delicate grey matter inside inflamed. But researchers at the University of Minnesota have discovered that patients with brain maladies can simply snort stem cells through the nose and directly to the brain, offering an effective and fast alternative to complicated neuro-surgical procedures.

August 15, 2008— The first time Army Specialist Frederick Hussey “got blown up in Iraq,” as he says, was on Easter Sunday, April 16, 2006. Hussey was five months into his yearlong deployment as an infantry medic when a cluster of anti-tank explosives jolted his Humvee off the road some 50 miles south of Baghdad. The blast filled the cabin with acrid black smoke, but Hussey was able to jerk the wheel back and steer the truck to safety. “Everybody ended up being OK with that one,” Hussey says. “You know—shook up and all, but there was no loss of life.

The September Popular Science feature "Shock to the System" (on newsstands next week), discusses the hidden danger of brain trauma faced by soldiers exposed to bomb blasts. The article reveals that one in five American soldiers serving in Iraq may be suffering from a brain injury—not from direct contact with explosions, but from the effects of bomb blast waves that can cause life-threatening damage at the cellular level, even from distances previously considered safe.

As many as 320,000 U.S. troops may have sustained brain injuries in Iraq and Afghanistan, yet less than half of them were evaluated by doctors. But now the Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Pentagon is funding a project to develop a device that would do on-site testing for brain trauma, and be tough enough to hold up in a war zone.

The gadget, which is being developed by neurosurgeon Jamshid Ghajar and his team at Weill Cornell Medical College, will use eye-tracking technology to measure the brain's health.