Some new information has shed some light on brain injuries and may help personal injury patients in Hollywood and across the country. For example, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists have released new guidelines and a new report about preventing brain injuries in children. According to the new data, targeting the cause of brain injuries in newborns could be an important step in preventing brain injury. While past guidelines asked doctor to look at lack of oxygen at birth as a cause of brain injury, the new guidelines ask doctors to examine all possible causes.
Doctors have focused on lack of oxygen during birth because it is a common cause of birth injury in Hollywood and other communities, leading to brain injury. However, according to the new report, there may be more causes of brain injury among children than previously thought and some of those causes may occur before labor and delivery. By considering a wider range of causes, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists hope to prevent brain injury among newborns in the future.
By asking doctors to consider brain injury more closely, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists hope to also uncover some brain injuries that may not be noticed right away. With current guidelines, the report claims, some mild cases of brain injury in newborns are not detected. Newer technology in brain imaging as well as closer examination by doctors could help detect these mild cases of injury.
In addition to the guidelines by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, a news report by CBS4 has uncovered a treatment being used by veterans in order to deal with mild traumatic brain injuries. According to the report, the veterans are using what is known as hyperbaric oxygen therapy, which involves placing a patient in a hyperbaric chamber for sessions that can be an hour long. The chamber is essentially a decompression chamber, typically used by divers who inhale 100 percent oxygen during their treatments.
Although the Food And Drug Administration has not approved hyperbaric oxygen therapy for traumatic brain injury, the treatment is legal and has been approved for 13 other uses. Some veterans report good results from the therapy. Some doctors have stated that the treatment may work because the oxygen allows for the growth of new blood vessels in an area of the brain where tissue has been wounded. They have noted a high rate of improvement among treated patients, but studies conducted by the Department of Veterans Affairs have not found the therapy to help Marines who had mild traumatic brain injuries.
Since the therapy is not approved by the FDA, the treatment is not currently covered for brain injury patients in Hollywood or any other community. However, there are plans to conduct clinical trials at Fort Carson in order to determine whether this treatment could be effective for veterans.
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