Brain Injury

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have drawn more attention to the plight of brain-injury survivors, as has the NFL's recent acknowledgment that some of its players are suffering neurological consequences from repeated concussions. But our health policies and treatment practices have yet to catch up to the staggering toll of this complex and insidious condition. Five million Americans are living with disabilities from brain injuries. There are 80,000 to 90,000 new long-term disabilities from brain injuries each year, and a new traumatic brain injury is sustained every 23 seconds.

The Bancroft NeuroHealth Institute for Professional Development and Research will hold "The ABCs of ABI," a conference on acquired brain injury, from 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. April 26 at the Cherry Hill Hilton on Route 70. The conference is designed to provide those who work with children with brain injuries knowledge about acquired brain injury assessment and how to handle behavioral, cognitive and clinical needs. Training sessions will be held on a variety of topics on pediatric brain injuries, including the mechanics of brain injury, characteristics that affect learning and behavior, and key teaching strategies.

Calling the Bryn Mawr Rehabilitation Hospital in Malvern "one of the best I've seen in the world," Michael Bond, a pioneer in the field of rehabilitative medicine, toured the hospital's new $13.7 million brain-injury unit Tuesday. "It's the only facility I've ever visited in the U.S. or abroad where the people responsible for treating the severely disabled also had a hand in designing the hospital," he said. "To my mind, that's the way it should be, but it really is quite unusual.

From the outside, it looks like any other suburban home. A white minivan is parked in the driveway of the spacious four-bedroom rancher in the Richwood section of town, and the house is surrounded by peach orchards, a covered patio and an above-ground pool - and sometimes by the footprints left in the grass by resident Joyce Toy as she paces outside, chatting to family members on a cordless phone. Inside, Toy bustles by the list of chores taped to the kitchen wall, bantering with her three housemates as they eat breakfast and crowd the kitchen counter to make their lunches before heading off to vocational training for the day. It is not the home's appearance but Toy and her housemates who make the house unique.

Research by University of Pennsylvania scientists is shedding some light on why brain damage progresses long after a traumatic injury. The work also suggests possible treatments. Scientists have previously shown that head trauma damages nerve fibers - axons - that connect nerve cells in the brain. These fibers are meant to stretch during normal activity, but a fast blow to the brain can snap or stretch them too far, said Douglas Smith, an associate professor in Penn's department of neurosurgery.

Brian Forsyth is a lifelong Phillies fan who lives in Havertown The Phillies saved my life. Well, technically, a bicycle helmet saved my life. (Wear a helmet, everyone.) But the Phillies have helped heal the traumatic brain injury I suffered in a traffic accident in August 2007. The physical and emotional scars of that accident have required massive amounts of therapy. A lot of it has taken place at Citizens Bank Park. I attended the clinching 2007 season finale in a wheelchair, and I had to leave the game early due to overstimulation.

Researchers have suspected for a while that people who sustain a single traumatic brain injury are more likely to develop Alzheimer's-like symptoms later in life. Now a University of Pennsylvania scientist has helped bolster that theory with some hard evidence: irregular protein deposits in samples of human brain. The brains came from 39 people who had had a moderate or severe traumatic brain injury at some point but died from another cause, anywhere from one to 47 years later.

More than seven months since he was nearly killed by a hit-and-run driver, 17-year-old David Silva lay Wednesday in a hospital bed set up in his family's dining room in Tacony, where a nurse makes sure he doesn't rip out the tube that helps him breathe. He reached his left arm over his head and pulled open his right eyelid, watching as a reporter entered the room. At his mother's instruction, he waved. "I know my son's still there," Dorothy Robbins said. But "with brain injuries, there's really nothing they can tell you. " Though David is making progress, Robbins doesn't know how long it could take her son, who is semiconscious and cannot speak, to recover.

Cathy Crimmins misses her husband. He didn't die, but the man she married continues on a long road to recovery from a traumatic brain injury. She calls it an "incomplete death. " "You've lost a person, or parts of that person, but he's still there," Crimmins says. Crimmins was on an idyllic lakeside vacation in Canada in July 1996 when a speedboat navigated by a teen-ager struck her husband and injured his head, damaging the frontal lobes that control speech, movement and personality, and sparking a four-year journey from hospital to rehabilitation center.

No degree of adversity could stop Thelma Renee Stevens from living life to the fullest.   Thelma suffered from a brain injury that caused seizures throughout her life, but her spirit never wavered. "She was a fighter," said an aunt, Patricia Fletcher. "She never gave up. " Thelma Stevens, who worked as a teacher's aide at a day-care center and as a housekeeper, died after a seizure on May 31. She was 25 and lived in West Philadelphia. Despite her physical problems, Thelma's death was unexpected and shocked the family.

While preparing to remove a malignant tumor from the Rev. Michael Prewitt's brain, neurosurgeon Steven Brem of the University of Pennsylvania worried that the surgery could affect his patient's ability to speak or move. As surgeons have for decades, he studied an MRI that showed the tumor in Prewitt's left parietal lobe. But he also examined a type of scan you've probably never heard of: diffusion tensor imaging. It shows bundles of the fibers that transmit messages from parts of the brain to one another and the brain stem.

A former babysitter was sentenced Tuesday to 10 to 20 years in prison and five years of probation for the December 2011 death of a toddler in her care. Heather Hess, 25, of Upper Chichester, was convicted in January of third-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter for the death of 2 1/2-year-old David Miller Jr. When police responded to Hess' Hewes Avenue residence on a report of a child in respiratory distress, paramedics were trying to treat the boy. According to a criminal complaint, Hess told officers that she had been cooking when she went into the family room and found the boy unconscious.

Every year, 1.7 million Americans suffer traumatic brain injuries, the result of car accidents, sports, gunshots, and mishaps as seemingly minor as a slip and fall. The rehabilitative path on which many embark was paved in part by Dr. Irwin W. Pollack. A professor of psychiatry and neurology at New Jersey's Robert Wood Johnson Medical School from 1968 to 1998, Dr. Pollack was among the pioneers of an integrated therapy now standard in the field. Where disabilities once were treated piecemeal, he marshaled myriad specialties in a team effort to give head-injury patients if not their old lives back, then new lives.

DR. IRWIN W. POLLACK gave hope when there seemed to be no hope. A heartbroken parent would come to him and say, "This is my son, but he isn't anybody I know. " A wife would say, "This is my husband, but he's a different person. " These were victims of devastating brain injuries, struck down in accidents, muggings and other trauma. Their injuries often rendered them unable to function. They sat in dark rooms, lost in the underworld of cognitive emptiness. But to Dr. Pollack there was always hope.

For a problem that has no doubt been around as long as humans have been falling on hard objects and bashing one another's skulls with clubs, brain injuries are still surprisingly mysterious. Scientists, including a cadre at the University of Pennsylvania, are lifting the veil, though, and what they're seeing is already "dramatically" changing American sports, said Douglas Smith, who heads Penn's Center for Brain Injury and Repair. Everyone from parents to pro athletes to military leaders is suddenly paying more attention to "mild" brain injuries, or concussions, and their long-term consequences.

More than seven months since he was nearly killed by a hit-and-run driver, 17-year-old David Silva lay Wednesday in a hospital bed set up in his family's dining room in Tacony, where a nurse makes sure he doesn't rip out the tube that helps him breathe. He reached his left arm over his head and pulled open his right eyelid, watching as a reporter entered the room. At his mother's instruction, he waved. "I know my son's still there," Dorothy Robbins said. But "with brain injuries, there's really nothing they can tell you. " Though David is making progress, Robbins doesn't know how long it could take her son, who is semiconscious and cannot speak, to recover.

LANDOVER, Md. – Turn off the searchlights. No superhero is coming down from the skies to rescue these Eagles. No miracle is coming along to save Andy Reid and his dreadful football team. At this point, Reid can only hope the Mayans were right and the world ends before the regular season. It has gone beyond embarrassing, past sad and is on the way to scary. It is bad enough the present is tarnishing Reid's past accomplishments as a head coach. But now we've reached the stage where the present dysfunction is also threatening the future.

Football has always been a big part of my life. It's a game of toughness and character that teaches important lessons about teamwork and responsibility. But I believe it's my duty to speak out about what has happened to me and many other football players. As I continue to battle amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, I hope to draw attention to the problem of concussions in professional football. I am just one of many former players who suffer from devastating brain and other neurological injuries - injuries that could have been prevented if the NFL had been honest about the risks.

In dealing with his latest quarterback conundrum, Eagles coach Andy Reid has to follow the lead of an unlikely person. Marcus Vick. That doesn't mean Reid should trade Michael Vick, as Vick's younger brother implored in a Twitter rant during the seven-sack debacle in New Orleans. That tweet got all the attention. Everyone overlooked this one: "I don't want to see brother with brain problems by the time he 45. Everybody have a job to do so do it. They all professionals" In answering questions about his quarterbacks Monday afternoon, Reid was like a (not especially graceful)