 |
|
|
|
Mirror Images May Assist the Brain During Rehab
The Heart and Stroke Foundation reports from this year’s World Stroke Congress that using a mirror during therapy may support the brain’s efforts to recover from stroke.
Japanese research shows that a mirror placed between the legs of patients during rehab exercise helped increase the speed of leg-lifting activity up to 12%. They suggest that the mirror image may “trick” the mind in some way, helping to support physical recovery. (Story)
Brain Interface Making Speech Recovery Possible
Erik Ramsey suffered a brain stem stroke nine years ago, leaving him almost totally paralyzed. But thanks to an implanted electrode, some software and a collaboration, Erik is learning to talk again. The software interprets signals from Erik’s brain to his vocal tract as he attempts to make sounds, translating his thoughts into sounds. He can hear his voice in real time, providing him feedback on his pronunciation, helping him to hone his speaking skills. According to an article in New Scientist, over the course of just a few weeks he improved his speech accuracy from 45% to 80%.
The “brain interface” is collaboration between a Georgia company, Neural Signals and a research team at Boston University. It currently works best with vowel sounds, and improvements are needed to better articulate consonants as they require more coordination of the body’s vocal system.
Early and Frequent Mobility Keeps Depression at Bay for Stoke Patients
Post stroke depression is a major concern to patient and family, but it also is associated with less participation in therapy and a poorer rate of recovery.
Dr. Toby B. Cumming at the National Stoke Research Institute in Australia tested the impact of early mobilization on stroke patients. On average their study group was up and mobilizing within 18 hours after the stroke (the standard care group wasn’t mobile until after 30 hours). The early results of Dr. Cumming’s study shows that increased physical activity in the days immediately after a stroke has a positive effect on patient’s general mood, leading to more effective rehabilitation and recovery. (Reuter’s story)
Understanding “Spreading Depression” in Brain Neurology Key to TBI Treatment
Researchers at the University of Cincinnati are leading a $2 million research project, focusing on a brain injury phenomenon called “spreading depression.” Spreading depressions are electrical failures in the brain’s neural network activity that spread beyond the initial injury site to other parts of the brain. As many as 60% of brain injury patients experience this phenomenon.
Researchers are trying to determine over how long a period spreading depression continues after injury. This is key information for early brain injury treatment because as these electrical disruptions spread, they cause increased tissue death or damage due to of the loss of blood and oxygen to those affected areas. Understanding spreading depression will help in developing early TBI treatment.
The research is being funded by the U.S. Department of Defense as a large number of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans are being afflicted by brain injury. (Story) The DOD has also recently awarded a $60 million grant to the University of California, San Diego to study TBI and its relation to post-traumatic stress disorder.
TBI Sufferers Show Significantly Lower Empathy
The Brain Blogger points to a recent study in the Journal of International Neuropsychological Society that shows that 61% of sufferers of traumatic brain injury exhibit low scores on the Balanced Emotional Empathy Scale (BEES), meaning they had less ability to empathize with others. The study seems to indicate that the low scores were not influenced by the severity of the brain damage, suggesting that even mild TBI can have lasting effects and that TBI interrupts general social cognition.
It’s interesting to note that almost simultaneously the University of Michigan has found in a recent study there that nearly one out of five delinquent youths suffer from some level of TBI. The question comes to mind, could a decreased level of empathy in TBI patients be related to the increased delinquency among youth who have some form of TBI?
Employed Caregiver Program Broadcast
A broadcast on “Innovative Employer Caregiving Programs” for employed caregivers is airing on the web and by satellite on September 17, 2008 from 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 noon (Pacific Time). The Department of Health and Human Services New Freedom Initiative Subcommittee (NFI) is producing the broadcast.
The broadcast is for employers, caregivers and organizations that provide caregiver services. It will include presentations from employers and organizations that have successfully instituted programs to help their employed caregivers. Presenters will discuss their programs, experiences, and how their successes can be replicated by others.
Assisting caregivers is an important topic for employers as their full or part-time employees are increasingly being called upon to care for an aging, sick or injured loved one. Helping caregivers through developing intelligent programs keep employees productive and able to balance all the demands on them. There will be a 30 minutes Q&A session by conference call following the broadcast. Employers looking to create services or programs should tune in.
The broadcast will be available on the web through the National Institutes of Health. There is also an audio line to listen in via telephone.
To get all the information about accessing the broadcast, and to register click here. You need to register to get broadcast access details.
Congressional Brain Injury Task Force Newsletter
With 1.4 million Americans experiencing traumatic brain injury and 5.3 million living with long-term and severe brain-related disabilities, the Congressional Brain Injury Task Force is now publishing a quarterly newsletter. The mission of the Task Force is to educate and promote awareness of brain injury and to support funding for research.
The newsletter recaps legislative activity, studies and reports, media coverage and upcoming events related to brain injury. While much of the activity in the Task Force is driven by the increased incidence of brain injury in soldiers in Iraq, much of the information and funding impacts anyone with brain injury.
The link to the full newsletter is here. New Brain and Spinal Injury Web Site and Blog
MIT’s Technology Review brings us a report about a new Brain and Spinal Cord Injury web site and blog. It is a rich resource, aimed at helping with learning to cope after a life-altering accident. Spend just a few minutes there and you will see that they are building an extensive knowledge base of information about rehabilitation, recovery, research, coping and treatment.
You’ll find a growing video library and a daily blog on the latest news and developments. The blog has a unique “Technology Thursday” posting each week which highlights new technological developments for treatment or assistance. Topic categories on the blog make for easy searching of more specific topics related to brain or spinal injury. Soon they will have a comprehensive list of treatment centers.
The website and blog are definitely worth checking out. You’ll find them here.
America’s Heroes At Work
The U.S. Department of Labor has just unveiled a new web site, America’s Heroes at Work, supporting the employment and success of returning Vets who have TBI and/or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It is designed for employers and workforce development organizations or departments and includes fact sheets, presentation & training tools, success stories, on-the-job challenge resources and best practices.
The initiative is jointly managed by the Office of Disability Employment Policy and the Veteran’s Employment and Training Service in collaboration with several federal agencies including the Department of Defense, the Small Business Administration and the Social Security Administration among others.
Scan the media landscape and you’ll find literally hundreds of stories published per day about traumatic injury. The immense attention being given to brain injury in particular, is fueled by the large numbers of veterans who are experiencing some form of TBI due to their deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The stories are often filled with the great hope surrounding treatments, research and funding.
But someone very unique leap up out of that landscape today – Elmo. Yes, that little red Elmo, along with his Spanish-speaking Sesame Street friend, Rosita. 
Sesame Workshop, the non profit organization behind the generation-traversing television show Sesame Street, today launched Talk, Listen, Connect: Deployments, Homecomings, Changes, a colorful multimedia, bilingual “kit” aimed at helping young children in military families cope with catastrophic injury and the changes it brings into their young worlds. The kit includes downloadable posters, videos, music, magazines and adult resource guides. Specific topics separated for children and adults; cover homecomings, deployments and “changes.”
The initiative is actually phase II of Sesame Workshop’s military outreach program, and aims to help young children between the ages of two and five who are experiencing the effects of injury, deployments and the changes in parents returning from the front lines. The success of the first phase of the TLC project, which was called Talk, Listen, Connect: Helping Families During Military Deployment was so successful Sesame Workshop enthusiastically launched its second phase.
The TLC kit is designed specifically for families now living with war-related injuries and for the purpose of helping caregivers build a sense of stability and resiliency during times of separation and change. According to the Workshop, its goals are:
• Reduce the level of anxiety children may experience during homecomings after multiple deployments
• Help parents with ways to cope with multiple deployments
• Help young children gain an age-appropriate understanding of a parent’s injury by including them and the entire family in the rehabilitation process
• Reassure children that they are loved and secure and that together with their families, they can learn new ways of being there for one another and having hope for the future 
Sesame Workshop will produce and distribute 500,000 DVD kits at no cost to families, schools, caregivers and facilitators. The TLC web site also contains much of the DVD material. The DVD kits include videos, print materials and postcards, all featuring the loved Muppet characters. The initiative serves the estimated 700,000 children between two and five who have a parent in the military. An enhanced TLC web site is also planned for unveiling this coming Fall.
While this initiative was created with some of the unique issues military families face in mind, we believe any family facing the challenges of separation and changes due to catastrophic injury will benefit from this wonderful project. We salute Sesame Workshop and their partners!
The TLC website is located here.
Inside our warm, home-like (yet highly specialized rehabilitation) Fresno CareMeridian facility, we’re proudly caring for some of our country’s veterans.
About one year ago, the Veteran’s Administration contacted us to assist them in caring for some of their most medically complex veteran patients. We of course welcomed this opportunity to serve with open arms. Plus, it made such perfect sense.
The VA approached us because CareMeridian has in place the knowledge
and high quality medical care programs for the very specialized care
that their brain injury, spinal cord injury, tracheotomy, and
ventilator-dependant patients require.
The VA is treating more than 200,000 patients from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq alone. Many of these are brain-injured – a class of injury about which the VA is admittedly struggling to become more knowledgeable. CareMeridian has a long history of exactly the type of specialized, long-term care such catastrophically injured patients require.
The VA hospitals are top-notch in acute care. They also excel at all aspects of limb injuries, rehabilitation and prosthetics. This is because, until very recently, these have been a major source of injury for vets. The VA over the years has perfected their ability to provide these types of treatments. But today, with the impressive advances in immediate post-injury and acute care, soldiers are surviving injuries they may not have just a few years ago – and that can mean some soldiers require very specialized long-term care that the VA is now working hard to be able to provide on a broader basis.
In working with the VA on our partnership, it became clear that even though we provide this care in small, highly staffed (4-1 patient to care-giver ratio), 12-bed facilities for personalized care, CareMeridian was able to deliver these services at about ½ the cost that the VA could provide them.
All in all, this means better care for our vets – and for their families. Certainly our entire focus on caring for such specialized needs in an intimate environment - that allows for including the family in the care day-to-day - is a primary benefit. But, because families may also be faced with certain co-insurance payments, our cost-effective care means their co-payments are less as well. And by placing the appropriate patients within our skilled facilities, the VA in turn has more beds at their facilities to allow for better care for other veteran patients.
We’re proud to be supporting the VA in their efforts by currently providing two types of services for our vets. We’re caring for those that require round-the-clock skilled nursing, such as IV, tracheotomy, ventilator and other catastrophic injury therapies; as well as those needing neuro-behavioral therapies, community integration, and caregiver training.
CareMeridian stands ready to support our troops in our own, very unique way.
Spanish Language Neurology Web Site
The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) recently launched a Spanish language web site with excellent information on many neurological disorders.
The web site has a wealth of information about specific disorders as well as publications and information on clinical studies. In addition to links to non-profit organizations and resources, NINDS also has a contact form for submitting questions. The web site is here. NINDS is part of the National Institutes of Health.
Coaching the Comeback
The New York Times published an inspiring story this month focused on occupational therapist, Jody Levin. She works every day to help heal brain-injured patients and this story reminds us how dedicated, caring health care workers encourage recovery miracles. Read the story here.
UCLA Research Finds Nervous Systems Can Rewire Itself
A recent UCLA study with mice shows that the central nervous system can reorganize itself after spinal injury by finding new pathways to restore the cellular communication required for movement. The study is shedding new light for doctors who believed that the only way for injured patients to walk again was to regrow the long nerves that link the brain and base of the spinal cord. The discovery could lead to new therapies for the estimated 250,000 Americans who suffer spinal injuries each year.
Interactive Memory Mapping: Learning About the Brain
National Geographic Magazine has an interactive feature on their web site explaining memory mapping.
It shows through beautifully design graphics how the brain works in
forming memories, storing them, and forgetting our memories due to age,
injury or illness. Learn more about how our brain works here.
Researchers Link Some Social Problems With Undetected Brain Injury
The Wall Street Journal reports that brain researchers are linking some common social problems, such as alcoholism, certain learning disabilities, and chronic homelessness to brain injury - a long-forgotten blow to the head.
Researchers have found high rates of head trauma among various populations in New York schools, addiction programs and in the general population. The research is being conducted by the Brain Injury Research Center at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. The findings are offering new hope to adults coping with the “hidden” effects of brain injury. Read the full article here.
Easter Seals Launches Brain Fitness Program for TBI Vets
Easter Seals is launching a new nationwide program to help returning veterans with Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). Nationwide, health care professionals estimate at least 30% of troops who have been engaged in active combat for four months or more are at risk for some brain injury due to exposure to the percussive effectives of explosive devices.
Easter Seal’s new Brain Fitness Program is a pilot program based on an in-home computer-based software program that helps people who have sustained some types of brain injury think faster, focus better and remember more. TBI is characterized by memory loss, difficulty in concentrating, slowness in thinking, and mood and personality changes. Beyond the computer software, the program includes phone and email support and referral to community resources.
Service members and veterans can enroll now by calling 866.423.4981 or emailing: veterans@easterseals.com to participate.
Two stories were in the news recently highlighting the hope and reality surrounding brain injury recovery. We thought you might appreciate the inspiration they provide.
Chris Cook in the UK, tells his story about a head-first fall from a cherry-picker doing minor household maintenance outside his home this summer. Despite the fact doctors did not expect him to survive or even emerge from his 3-week coma, he returned home last week – after 12 weeks of hospitalization and therapy – and is well on the road to a full recovery.
Read Chris’s story in an article in The Press (UK) here and view a video of Chris telling his own amazing recovery story here.
Closer to home in Austin, Texas, 29-year old Ryan is taking lessons in comedy at the famous Improv and doing karate two years after a boating accident that nearly killed him. Although Ryan is still recovering, this is his take on how he’s doing: "I'm glad to be better," Ryan Reitmeyer said. "It only took me two years to do it, but I'm in good shape now. I have a great life ahead of me."
Ryan’s story is here in the Austin American-Statesman.
Ryan’s family was blessed with financial resources many people do not have when faced with traumatic brain injury. But one senator is tackling that issue to bring resources to bear for more people.
State Senator Flanagan of Vermont, himself a survivor of TBI, held a press conference recently specifically to address brain injury and the wide-ranging severity and symptoms of it. He announced that he has initiated a legislative study committee with the goal of highlighting issues that face brain injury survivors – including the need for insurance companies to significantly lengthen the payment period for brain injury rehabilitation. Senator Flanagan said, "I'd like to see insurance companies look at brain injury the same way they look at other chronic care.”
We are watching with interest the results of this initiative because we know here at CareMeridian, some miracles just take a little longer than others.
Here at CareMeridian we experience everyday the small and progressive miracles the body can produce with proper care and rehabilitation. Our job is to integrate proven therapies that encourage and support the body’s ability to heal and overcome illness or injury.
The research community is continually informing our mission as it progresses with medical understanding of the healing process. Almost every day some new piece of the human-body puzzle is discovered; and research is constantly underscoring the hope there is for anyone struck with traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injury or other medically complex condition.
New research for example, shows promise in evolving surgical and pharmacological therapies for spinal cord injury. Studies indicate that if undertaken immediately after injury, certain therapies may help damaged nervous systems to regenerate. A recent grant from the National Institutes of Health is funding a study on the brain’s natural response to injury, which will help to expand medical knowledge about enhancing the body’s own healing response. And, Carnegie Mellon scientists are showing in the laboratory that certain parts of the brain are extremely adaptive - even when sensory input has been severely damaged (sight or touch) - and that the brain is flexible in compensating for damage to it.
With more than 12,000 spinal cord injuries every year in the United States and Canada, and an estimated 5.3 million people surviving with traumatic brain injuries, some of the world’s most brilliant minds are committed to finding therapies and designing rehabilitation regimes for improving the outcomes for our patients and your loved ones.
CareMeridian is on the forefront in keeping abreast of the latest medical findings. We treat the whole patient, physically, psychologically, and personally. Experience matters, knowledge matters, and hope is an important part of the equation - for the patient and for family members,
The hope and realities of TBI are getting more attention than ever before, unfortunately because so many of our soldiers are returning home with brain trauma. Some of their brain injuries are unseen - and even undiagnosed for long periods of time - and others bear the striking physical scars.
Doctors are declaring traumatic brain injury the signature wound of the Iraq war. TBI is getting this distinction partly because armor is vastly improving, helping troops to survive once-deadly explosions, but it cannot protect the brain against many of the very serious concussive injuries suffered inside the head from the force of the blasts. In some cases TBI is an “invisible wound.”
The television network ABC aired a special report recently both by and about reporter Bob Woodruff who suffered massive head injury last year while in Iraq covering the conflict. By all accounts Mr. Woodruff has made a miraculous recovery, although he admits his recovery is a continuous process. The report introduced those who may not be as familiar with TBI as we are here at Care Meridian to the journey it requires to recover, and to the inspiring hope for recovery expert care can provide.
The reality is the outlook for TBI is vastly influenced by both the immediate care and the on-going therapy sufferers receive. Sadly, ABC’s story also revealed not all our soldiers are yet getting the high-level extended care they need for optimal recovery. The Veterans Administration is struggling to cope, keep up and to provide better long-term TBI care.
Something we know intimately at Care Meridian is that traumatic brain injury recovery involves not only intense physical and neurological rehabilitation, but the emotional, psychological and spiritual aspects of a person as well. Secretary of Veterans Affairs, R. James Nicholson has said that TBI patients “need a combination of psychiatric, psychological and physical rehabilitation that can be difficult to coordinate in a traditional hospital.”
TBI can often be misunderstood and requires specialty and focused, expert care. The stories of our returning soldiers are as unique as the individual, and their recoveries will be as well. We at Care Meridian salute them.
On Christmas Eve a tiny miracle came into the world. Baby Audrey Edwards was welcomed into the arms of her father Mike and mother, Amanda Arthur Edwards.
Now, this is a marvel that is bestowed on our world more than 300,000 times every day of every year.
But this baby, this family is no ordinary miracle.
Almost ten years ago Amanda suffered traumatic brain injury in a car crash that left her in a coma from which her doctors predicted she would not emerge. But 10 weeks later emerge she did - and her journey toward recovery brought her into the Care Meridian family.
Care Meridian provided Amanda with what we give every patient: specialized and focused medical care, expert therapies, home-like surroundings, and abundant love, support and information. Amanda turned them into her own string of miracles: walking, then driving, living independently, working, marrying Aussie husband Mike last January, – and now being a mother to her tiny and extraordinary daughter.
Some everyday miracles are just a little harder to come by than others.
The Orange County Register, among other media outlets, have along the way chronicled Amanda’s (Mandy’s) recover. Read the Register’s most recent article, Mandy’s Baby.
Congratulations, Mandy and Mike!
Photo credit: OC Register
|
|
