The Gary Galiher Law Hour — Episode 10: Sub-Concussions and CTE w/ Dr. Violet Horvath

It’s not just NFL pro players who have to worry about concussive and repetitive sub-concussive injuries. Kids who play sports are being exposed to these traumas, too.

Dr. Violet Horvath, Director of the Pacific Disabilities Center, along with our very own Anthony Carr, joined our host Mike Buck for today’s episode of the Gary Galiher Law Hour. Their conversation helps sheds light on the risks of these injuries and how to decrease them.

Evidence of the connection between chronic traumatic encephalopathy and behavioral changes is mounting. Several researchers at the Neuro-Huddle said they believe CTE to be at the root of the mood instability and unhinged behavior often seen in the victims.

Hard proof of this remains to be established, however, because the science of CTE is still nascent. While we learned a lot at this year’s Neuro-Huddle and CTE Conference, according to Dr. Horvath, “it was clear. What we don’t know far exceeds what we do know.”

For example, there’s no way to diagnose with certainty whether a living person has CTE. Studies aimed toward making diagnosis possible are underway now, and those leading it hope for results within the next year or two.

Meanwhile, there are huge opportunities for the prevention of head injuries. Dr. Horvath recommends that young people not play football, soccer or judo, which carry high risks of head injuries. Again, the current understanding of brain science is insufficient: “With the kids… some of the things that are being proposed are that no one under 12 be able to do any kind of contact sports, at least in football, and honestly 12 is kind of arbitrary. We don’t know. Maybe it needs to be 9, maybe higher is okay,” she said.

Another issue is that people this young aren’t able to give informed consent. They’re generally too young to fully understand the issues, therefore they cannot make decisions about playing that could affect them decades into the future. “Until someone is actually old enough to understand and give their consent for themselves, maybe they shouldn’t be playing.”

If you are a resident of Hawai‘i of any age who has had a traumatic brain injury or concussion, stroke, or spinal cord injury, Dr. Horvath would like to ask for a few minutes of your time to participate in the Hawai‘i Neurotrauma Registry Project Online Survey. Find more information about it and join the registry at the Hawai‘i Neurotrauma Registry website, and take the Hawai‘i Neurotrama Registry Survey here on SurveyMonkey.

As always, thanks for tuning in!

 

Photo: Boston University Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy, “Image of chronic traumatic encephalopathy“, (c) CC-SA-4.0

It’s National Brain Injury Awareness Day

This month is Brain Injury Awareness Month, and today, March 16th, is National Brain Injury Awareness Day. Our friends at the Brain Injury Association of America (BIAA) are on Capitol Hill, advocating for increased civilian and military access to care, funding for state programs, expanded brain injury research, and raising congressional awareness of brain injury-related issues.

national-brain-injury-awareness-dayThe co-chairs of the Congressional Brain Injury Task Force hosted a brain injury awareness fair with over 50 exhibitors, a congressional briefing, and a reception to celebrate the Congressional Brain Injury Task Force and Brain Injury Awareness Month.

Brain injuries have a great cost to society: they claim the lives of 137 people every day, and affect someone in the US every 13 seconds. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 1.7 million people sustain a traumatic brain injury every year in the US. According to Daniel Weinberger, MD, director and CEO of the Lieber Institute for Brain Development at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Professor of Psychiatry, Neurology, Neuroscience and Human Genetics, brain injury is the “leading cause of long-term disability in children and adults younger than 35 years, costing $75 billion a year.”

Despite these astounding rates of incidence, brain injury has gotten little recognition around the US until recently, and even now remains largely ignored outside of its role in American football. For example, few people seem to know the extent of the TBI problem in the military, but over 339,000 military service members have been diagnosed with a TBI since the year 2000. We at Galiher DeRobertis & Waxman would like to see the conversation broaden so that TBI can no longer be called a silent epidemic.

Most of the public discourse and scientific research to date has focused on the pathology and prevention of traumatic brain injury (TBI). Though these efforts are very important, there is also a great need for the development of new treatments for people who have suffered a TBI, not only through understanding the damage done to the brain but, more importantly, through learning how to improve function of the parts of the brain that remain undamaged.

We at the firm have put a big effort into raising awareness of TBI and concussions (which are a particular form of TBI) in Hawai‘i, so we are glad to see issue of traumatic brain injury under the national spotlight again. However, we still have more work ahead to increase the prevention and awareness of brain injury. The Galiher firm aims to: help individuals and families affected gain financial stability after sports-related brain injuries, and to protect the brains of our young athletes so that children can participate in sports without risking serious injury.

Learn more about TBI and visit our knowledge center at http://traumaticbraininjuryhawaii.com/.