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Experts in the field of neuroscience will discuss the integration of Military, Professional Sports and Youth Sports programs to better prevent, identify and treat brain injuries at a special Host Committee dinner discussion during the Sarah Jane Brain Foundation's Annual Angel Awards banquet, the organization announced today.

The SJBF also announced that 100% of the donations received from the American PABI Heroes Concert, which will be held after the Angel Awards Reception, as well as all of the online donations made during its live webcast will be donated to the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund (which is building the National Intrepid Center of Excellence for Traumatic Brain Injury in Bethesda, MD).  All of these events will be held at Webster Hall in New York City on Tuesday, November 17 and will be open to the media.

The Discussion will be moderated by Dr. Daniel Perl, Director of the Neuropathology Division at Mount Sinai School of Medicine and the host Committee Dinner Dialogue Discussion will feature:

• Dr. David Hovda, Director the UCLA Brain Injury Research Center who is advising the Pentagon on brain injuries
• Dr. Thom Mayer, Chairman of Best Practices and Medical Director for the NFL Players Association
• Dr. Gerard Gioia, Chief, Division of Pediatric Neuropsychology; Director, Safe Concussion Outcome, Recovery & Education (SCORE) Program at Children's National Medical Center
• Mr. Chris Nowinski, President and CEO of the Sports Legacy Institute

Imediately following the Annual Angel Awards Reception, Webster Hall will be opened up for a concert performance by all the semi-finalists, with 100% of the ticket sales being donated to the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund.  The concert will be webcast live and all of the online donations made during the day will also be donated to the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund.

Ten bands who were selected this spring as semi-finalists from around the country compete during the day to become the "American PABI Hero." The bands competing include:

• Boston, MA: Slow Century
• New York, NY: April's End
• Raleigh, NC: The Wayves
• Raleigh, NC: Sights of Sound
• Miami, FL: The Nicole Patrick Band
• Columbus, OH: OfHuman
• Chicago, IL: ZC Flawless Drumline
• Dallas, TX: Lately
• Denver, CO: J. Co
• Los Angeles, CA: Me & Heath

The events will take place Tuesday, November 17, 2009, at Webster Hall, 125 East 11th Street, New York City beginning at 11:00 am - 3:00 pm with the American PABI Heroes Grand Finale. From 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm Annual Angels Awards Reception will be held at a cost of $150 per person (VIP tickets: $1,000). Immediately following the dinner will be the Host Committee Dinner Dialogue Discussion about the Integration of Military, Professional and Youth Sports programs for the prevention, identification and treatment of brain injuries from 8:00 - 10:00 pm. Additionally, the American PABI Heroes Concert for The Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund will be held from 8:00 pm - 12:00 am.

For questions or additional information, please contact Sarah Jane Brain Foundation's Communications Director, Jennipher Dickens at (212) 576-1180 or Jennipher@TheBrainProject.org.
 

The New Jersey Division of Disability Services has decided to change the Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) Fund. Current financial conditions and a growth in the number of fund cases has resulted in changes which will impact benefits and coverage. As a result, medical co-pays for doctor visits; pharmaceutical co-pays; health insurance / COBRA premiums; disposable medical supplies; co-pays for therapy services; and medical gym memberships will no longer be covered.

For those individuals who have previously been awarded coverage for these items, the Division will continue payments for up to 90 days of service ending on or before December 31, 2009. As of January 1, 2010, no further payments will be made.

For more information on what these changes will mean to you and your family, visit the Division of Disability Serives online here.

The Brain Injury Association of New Jersey’s Children & Adolescents Committee will hold the next session of Brain Injury Basics for Parents & School Professionals next Tuesday October 20, 2009 from 6:30 – 8:30 PM at Rowan University, Chamberlain Building, Room 221, 201 Mullica Hill Road, Glassboro, NJ 08028. The seminar will be presented by Barbara Leech, Ph.D., a Pediatric Neuropsychologist.

The educational seminars are intended for parents, school professionals, and other interested health and disability professionals. During the seminar, attendees will learn to identify, understand and respond to the special needs of students with brain injuries. Professional Development Hour certificates can be presented to school professionals. For additional information or to RSVP, contact Justin Stanley of the Brain Injury Association of New Jersey at 732-745-0200 or by email at jstanley@bianj.org.

Researchers from the University of California have published a new study validating prediction rules for identifying children at very low risk for clinically-important traumatic brain injuries for whom CT can routinely be obviated.  The researchers, noting that CT imaging of head injured children has the risk of radiation-induced malignancy, aim to identify children at very low risk of clinically-important TBI for whom CT scans might be unnecessary.  The research utilized patients under the age of 18 presenting with 24 hours of head trauma with Glasgow Coma Scale scores between 14-15 in 25  North American emergency departments.
 
The researchers analyzed over 42,000 children, obtaining CT scans on approximately 15,000 patients.  Of those, clinically-important TBI occurred in about one percent (376) and of those, 60 underwent neurosurgery.  The researchers concluded that for children younger than two years who had normal mental status, no scalp hematoma except frontal, no loss of consciousness or loss of consciousness for less than five seconds, non-severe injury mechanism, no palpable skull fracture and acting normally according to the parents, had a negative predictive value for clinically-important traumatic brain injury.  For children aged two years and older, the prediction rule with normal mental status, no loss of consciousness, no vomiting, non-severe injury mechanism, no signs of basilar skull fracture and no severe headache had a negative predictive value of 99.95 percent and sensitivity of 96.8 percent.  Neither rule missed neurosurgery in the validation populations.
 
The study was funded by the Emergency Medical Services for Children Programme of the Maternal and Child Health Bureau, and the Maternal and Child Health Bureau Research Programme, Health Resources and Services Administration, US Department of Health and Human Services.  The study was published in the Lancet and can be found onilne here.

I recently read an interesting article in “Brain” a Journal of Neurology.  The article is entitled “Impaired eye movements in post-concussion syndrome indicate suboptimal brain function beyond the influence of depression, malingering or intellectual ability”.  The paper was authored by Marcus H. Heitger and his colleagues in Christchurch, New Zealand.

The researchers examined whether post-concussion syndrome patients continued to show disparities in eye movement function at 3-5 months following mild traumatic brain injury as compared with patients who had a good recovery.  The researchers “hypothesized that eye movements might provide sensitive and objective functional markers of ongoing cerebral impairment in post-concussion syndrome.  Thirty-six PCS participants were matched with thirty-six controls (patients of similar injury severity but good recovery) on reflexive, anti- and self-paced saccades, memory-guided sequences and smooth pursuit.

The researchers found that the PCS group performed worse on anti-saccades, self-paced saccades, memory-guided sequences and smooth pursuit, suggesting problems and response inhibition, short-term spatial memory, motor-sequence programming, visuospatial processing and visual attention. 

The researchers concluded that compared with neuropsychological testing, eye movements were more likely to be markedly impaired in post-concussion syndrome cases with high symptom overload.  “Poorer eye movement function, and particularly poorer subcortical oculomotor function, correlated more with post-concussive symptom load and problems on activities of daily living whilst poorer neuropsychological function exhibited slightly better correlations with measures of mental health.”

Once again, this is another important research study indicating that patients with post-concussion syndrome do not all recover within a short period of time and provides objective evidence of such injury.