Brain Injury

Thomas Loyden, a Northeast Philadelphia man who suffered brain damage when he was hit on the head with a police nightstick while being arrested April 2, was found not guilty yesterday of charges that he assaulted a police officer and resisted arrest. "I heard him right, didn't I?" asked a tearful Mary Loyden, Loyden's mother, after Municipal Judge Michael Conroy pronounced Loyden "not quilty of all charges. " "There is some justice after all," Mary Loyden said. "The wrong people were on trial today," she said.

Simon Gagne did not suffer three concussions this season. The Flyers left winger suffered one concussion in late October from which he never recovered, according to James Kelly, a concussion specialist. That was the most revealing disclosure in a one-hour news conference yesterday with Gagne and general manager Paul Holmgren. Gagne suffered a concussion Oct. 24 in Florida after a high check from Jay Bouwmeester clipped the Flyers star in the jaw. He returned to the ice less than two weeks later on Nov. 5 despite displaying light symptoms.

A father admitted yesterday in Chester County Court that he had cut the soles of his newborn baby's feet and caused a brain injury two years ago while she was under his care. Luther Murray Houser, 28, pleaded guilty to simple assault and child endangerment charges, abruptly ending his trial, which began on Tuesday. Houser, a gas station employee living in Wynnewood, agreed to plead guilty to the lesser charge once it became apparent that the District Attorney's Office could not convict him of the more serious charge of aggravated assault, said Samuel C. Stretton, Houser's attorney.

Six-and-a-half years ago, Doug Walker and two of his college buddies were reveling in the carefree fun of a summer vacation in Myrtle Beach, S.C. In the early morning hours of June 6, 1981, as the trio walked across a South Carolina highway in anticipation of the day's adventure, Walker and his friends, Lee Ann Moore and Danny Malm, were struck by a car traveling down the roadway at 60 m.p.h. Walker was hit first. His right knee was crushed and doctors were doubtful that he would ever regain its full use. Malm received a brain injury that left him in a coma for five months.

Former Villanova basketball star Howard Porter, an adult probation officer living and working in St. Paul, Minn., was reported to be clinging to life at a Twin Cities hospital after being assaulted over the weekend. St. Paul police spokesman Tom Walsh yesterday would not confirm media reports that Porter, 58, had been badly beaten. But Walsh said that Porter was a victim of aggravated assault, a felony, and that police continued to investigate. No arrests have been made, Walsh said, and investigators had yet to talk to Porter.

A year ago, Zach Trigg toppled off a 40-foot mountain and descended into a seven-week-long coma. Today, he has reached unthinkable heights. It has been a painful climb back from a severe brain injury. Trigg has had to relearn basic skills most people take for granted. But in the process, those close to him say, he has gained compassion and in turn is imparting that to others. Trigg was with fellow Upper Moreland High School students on a trip to Killington, Vt., on Jan. 9, 1993, when he apparently skied off a patch of ice. He plummeted from an embankment, hit his head on a tree, ricocheted off, then hit his head again.

Candace Gantt bends over her Trek handlebars, her back racer-flat. She's concentrating on the stretch of pavement ahead as she negotiates the gentle hills and valleys of the narrow, two-lane road in Willistown Township. Biking is one of her fondest joys. Two weeks earlier, this tall and tanned 48-year-old, with a resting heart rate of 48, had completed her first Half Ironman at Lake Placid, N.Y. On this clear day, July 21, 2005, while daughters Carter, 11, and Morgan, 4, are at camp, Gantt and her training buddy Mary Wood are four miles into a new 15-mile route.

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.

Roller coasters are not bad for the brain after all, says a University of Pennsylvania study. Researchers calculated the effects of riding three of the nation's mega-coasters and found that the forces experienced by the head are not nearly enough to cause brain injury. The study comes after anecdotal reports of dozens of people, including eight who died, who suffered burst blood vessels, bleeding, and nerve damage in the brain around the time they rode a roller coaster. "Recently, there has been much attention focused on the possibility that larger, faster roller coasters with high G forces . . . are inducing brain injuries in riders," Penn researchers Douglas Smith and David Meaney wrote in the Journal of Neurotrauma.

MossRehab, part of Albert Einstein Healthcare Network, has announced plans to open a community residential program in Woodbury. The facility will serve people who have experienced a brain injury - usually caused by car accidents, falls and work-related injuries - and cannot live on their own. The facility will open early this year. Called the Drucker Community Residence, the 5,000-square-foot Victorian home will house up to eight residents age 18 to 65. The goal of the program is to help people with brain injuries develop living skills so that they can return to the community.