Integrative Medicine in Traumatic Brain Injury.

Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is a group of diverse medical and health care systems, practices, and products that are not presently considered to be a part of conventional medicine. Integrative medicine combines treatment with conventional medical practices and elements of CAM in which there is strong evidence in efficacy and safety. Although there is growing interest in the integrative medical approach in treating the patient population with traumatic brain injury, there is a paucity in high-quality clinical trials supporting its use.

Structured interview for mild traumatic brain injury after military blast: inter-rater agreement and development of diagnostic algorithm.

The existing gold standard for diagnosing a suspected previous mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) is clinical interview. But it is prone to bias, especially for parsing the physical versus psychological effects of traumatic combat events, and its inter-rater reliability is unknown. Several standardized TBI interview instruments have been developed for research use but have similar limitations.

Cytotoxic and vasogenic cerebral oedema in traumatic brain injury: assessment with FLAIR and DWI imaging.

Primary Objective: Cerebral oedema is a common complication of traumatic brain injury (TBI). The use of Fluid-Attenuated Inversion Recovery (FLAIR) imaging in combination with Diffusion Weighted Imaging (DWI) has the potential to distinguish between cytotoxic and vasogenic oedema. This study hypothesized a significant relationship between cytotoxic lesion volume and outcome.

Functional outcome scales in traumatic brain injury: a comparison of the Glasgow Outcome Scale (Extended) and the Functional Status Examination.

Clinical trials aimed at developing therapies for traumatic brain injury (TBI) require outcome measures that are reliable, validated, and easily administered. The most widely used of these measures, the Glasgow Outcome Scale (GOS) and the GOS-Extended (GOS-E), have been criticized as suffering from ceiling effects. In an attempt to develop a more useful and dynamic outcome measure, the Functional Status Examination (FSE) was developed, which grades outcome across 10 functional domains.

Evaluation of seizure-like episodes in survivors of moderate and severe traumatic brain injury.

Background: Transient paroxysmal alterations of consciousness or behavior are common sequelae of moderate and severe traumatic brain injury (TBI). Clinicians caring for patients with such episodes often diagnose them as epileptic seizures, a frequent and well-studied complication of TBI. As it is difficult to confirm this diagnosis, antiepileptic drugs are often used empirically.