Home »  Browse News Briefs »  Scientists examining how bomb blasts can cause longterm brain injury

Geoff Ling, an advance-research scientists with the Pentagon, explains that scientists are finding worse damage to the brain from bomb blasts than was originally thought.  He says that even when there are no outward signs of injury from a blast, cells deep within the brain can be altered, and their metabolism changed, causing them to die.  TBI - or Traumatic Brain Injury - is a common injury in the Iraq War.

Symptoms of TBI can be mild, moderate, or severe, ranging from headache, confusion, lightheadedness, dizziness, blurred vision, or tired eyes, to chronic migraines, repeated vomiting and nausea, convulsions or seizures, fatigue, agitation, and an inability to wake up.  According to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, aprroximately half of severe cases of TBI require surgery to remove or repair hematomas (ruptured blood vessels) or contusions (bruised brain tissue).

Sadly, much of the research on the affects of TBI is coming from blast experiments on animals over the past few years, in various research laboratories, where scientists expose critters to explosions and then test their brain tissue under microscopes.

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