Future directions in brain injury research.

This paper reviews the potential future directions that are important for brain injury research, especially with regard to concussion. The avenues of proposed research are categorized according to current concepts of concussion, types of concussion, and a global schema for globally reducing the burden of concussion.

Combat injury coding: a review and reconfiguration.

Background: The current civilian Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS), designed for automobile crash injuries, yields important information about civilian injuries. It has been recognized for some time, however, that both the AIS and AIS-based scores such as the Injury Severity Score (ISS) are inadequate for describing penetrating injuries, especially those sustained in combat. Existing injury coding systems do not adequately describe (they actually exclude) combat injuries such as the devastating multi-mechanistic injuries resulting from attacks with improvised explosive devices (IEDs).

Neuropathological findings in disabled survivors of a head injury.

We investigated how the occurrence and severity of the main neuropathological types of traumatic brain injury (TBI) influenced the severity of disability after a head injury. Eighty-five victims, each of whom had lived at least a month after a head injury but then died, were studied. Judged by the Glasgow Outcome Scale (GOS), before death 35 were vegetative, 30 were severely and 20 were moderately disabled.