A 28-year-old woman died of severe brain damage after an accident incurred while snowboarding in Colorado. The odd thing is, her accident didn’t cause any trauma directly to her head or brain. Jennifer Ash, of Indianapolis, IN, fell and landed hard on her buttocks while snowboarding on March 16. Ski patrol was not notified because the accident was assumed to be fairly minor.

Her friends did take her to a medical center where she was evaluated and sent to critical care at another facility. It was soon discovered that Ash had suffered a vertebral artery dissection which resulted in a basilar artery stroke brain damage. She was pronounced dead on March 23, seven days after her accident.

Vertebral artery dissection is caused by a whipping action of the neck which hyper-extends side to side. Blood flow is significantly reduced, leading to damage of the oxygen-starved portions of the brain.

So if there are any snowboarders or other extreme athletes out there, be careful! And, more importantly, know the risks of your sport and of this specific type of injury. If you tweak your neck, be sure to get medical treatment immediately just to be on the safe side. Read the original story here.

Have you experienced or heard about similar rare or freak accidents? If so, leave a comment. I’d like to hear about it.

Omega-3 fatty acids, the stuff from seafood, seem to be pretty miraculous substances. My doctor has me taking them right now, as a matter of fact. I don’t really know why, but he’s a doctor, right?

Well, it turns out that omega-3 fatty acids supposedly do a lot of good stuff for your body such as reducing your chance of sudden cardiac death and heart arrhythmias, lessening the likelihood of heart attacks, improving circulation, and reducing blood pressure slightly. And now, it would seem, another benefit can be added to that list: omega-3 fatty acids have been shown to help with the treatment of spinal cord injuries.

The promise that these fatty acids show is in protection against secondary injury in SCI patients. Secondary injury is caused basically as a reaction to the initial SCI injury. The spinal cord swells up, nerve fibers deteriorate, and cavities and cysts form in the spinal cord. This all begins to happen immediately after the primary injury occurs. Simply put, the secondary injury spreads from the initial injury point, causing massive damage to a larger area of the spinal cord. It may not be possible to reverse the damage of the first injury, but decreasing the impact of the secondary injury is feasible.

When injected into rats 30 minutes after SCI, the fatty acids were shown to significantly protect against secondary injury. Furthermore, continued dosages of the fatty acids following the injury showed a marked improvement as well.

It is recommended that the treatment be started within an hour of injury. Maybe one day omega-3 fatty acids will be a common tool of EMTs. Thoughts?

According to a new survey commissioned by Headway, discrimination against brain injury victims is alarmingly widespread. More than two thirds of brain injury survivors believe that they are discriminated against by society because of their injuries. Most alarming, however, is that 60% of respondents had experienced discrimination from at least one institutional service (healthcare, social services, employment, etc.).

One woman says, “I’ve been verbally abused by a bus driver while trying to use my disabled pass as he thought I was a fraud, been humiliated by a library receptionist when I was struggling to fill out a form and my balance problems mean I am often refused access to pubs on the assumption I’m drunk. ”

Read the original article here.

Why does society tend to treat people with brain injuries so poorly? Is it a lack of awareness? A lack of education? Is it some sort of fear of the unknown? Leave a comment and let us know what you think.

A report was released today summarizing the conclusions reached by the attendees of the Brain Injury Consensus Conference, which was held on November 2, 2007. The conference included more than one hundred of the nation’s most respected authorities on brain injury. The report, entitled Barriers and Recommendations: Addressing the challenge of Brain Injury in America, points out our greatest inadequacies in dealing with traumatic brain injuries and offers recommendations to remedy each inadequacy.

The need for Cognitive Rehabilitation is mentioned, as well as the lack of healthcare coverage for such treatment and/or other lifetime treatments. Disappointingly, a true solution is not offered. The report stresses that insurance companies should support long-term care, but where is that money going to come from?

Many of the recommendations are vague, but it’s a start. At least we’re finally talking about this and trying to fix it. Download the full report here.

Following right on the heels of yesterday’s story about the spinal cord injury patient in southern Oregon, is this story of SCI patients in the UK. Apparently they too are finding the Nintendo Wii to be a beneficial part of SCI recovery. Sounds like fun too!

Lloyd Millimake is ready to go home after his intensive rehabilitation utilizing, of all things, a Nintendo Wii video game system. Millimake has been at Rogue Valley Medical Center in southern Oregon for a month now, following a motorcycle accident that fractured four vertebrae and severely compressed his spine. His physical therapist chose the Wii to help with his rehabilitation because of its unique requirement of mind and body coordination. Read more here.

The Brain Injury Association of New Jersey has launched an online campaign aimed at teenagers, who are statistically at high risk for traumatic brain injury. The new website, UGotBrains.com, urges teens to think before they act, wear seatbelts, and never drink and drive. Dramatic photos and videos punctuate the stark facts of what one may go through after a traumatic brain injury.

Anna Badkhen of the Boston Globe writes about the Bittle family. The husband, Ted Bittle suffers the permanent effects of a traumatic brain injury sustained while serving in the Navy in Iraq. Traumatic brain injury in returning veterans has been a hot topic lately, but little focus has been paid on the toll it takes on their families.

The Bittle family is just one of hundreds of thousands who must live with these injuries for the rest of their lives. They often struggle to afford the treatments, and may have to quit work to provide care for their loved one. In the end, it is often a struggle to merely hold the family together through the crisis. Read more here.

Researchers at the University of Washington have developed software which allows the user to use vocal sounds to control their computer. The Vocal Joystick differs from previous methods in that the user does not have to use actual words to complete tasks. The controls are based off of simpler, more easily identifiable sounds such as vowel or consonant sounds. This results in much smoother operation and less error produced by the software. This could be a major breakthrough for easier computer access for people with impaired motor function. Read more here.

Chase Ford, who just turned five on March 17, will be walking in this year’s Kentucky Derby Festival Marathon/miniMarathon. What’s amazing is that Chase was paralyzed from the neck down from a spinal cord contusion he sustained less than three years ago. He is now able to walk 100 meters on his own, thanks largely to Locomotor training provided to him by the Reeve Foundation. Proceeds from the event will benefit 13 different charities. Read more here.