The possibility that America’s involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan could be creating a population of veterans who will be mildly to moderately brain-injured is alarming, to say the least. That’s what Dr. Sheldon Goldberg, medical director of Porter Adventist’s rehabilitation unit, had to say in response to a report earlier this month that found nearly one in five Fort Carson soldiers returning from war zones are suffering potentially serious brain injuries.
In a war where bombs are the operative killing devices – planted in vehicles, alongside roads or strapped to people’s bodies – soldiers are being exposed to blasts that are rattling their skulls.
It’s a devastating state of affairs and it is critical that military officials respond forcefully to ensure that these soldiers get treatment – and get it as soon as possible. In past wars, soldiers might have died from such injuries. But better body armor and Kevlar, a protective synthetic fiber that can block bullets, are keeping them alive.
Since June 2005, 13,400 soldiers in three Fort Carson brigades have been screened for traumatic brain injury (TBI), the invisible but signature injury of the wars. Fort Carson has found that 178 of every 1,000 soldiers screened had such an injury. Thirteen percent of those were found to be too injured to return to combat.
The latest report was part of an ongoing study by Fort Carson medical experts, who are to be commended for conducting the screenings and making their findings public. Their findings should serve as a warning to others in the military and veteran medical systems.
Publicity about this potentially devastating injury will go a long way to diagnosing and treating it and educating people so it does not become a stigma for our soldiers when they’re out of uniform.
The Denver Post recently reported that a Fort Carson soldier in Iraq started having memory loss and retention problems after tumbling down a hillside in a five- ton Army truck. Fellow soldiers made fun of him and apparently didn’t take it seriously enough to get him treatment. All soldiers ought to be educated about the symptoms of TBI – from headaches to memory loss. Three years after the truck incident, the injured soldier was diagnosed with TBI.
Last week, Fort Carson announced it would start testing new brain scanners to try to detect injuries, rather than relying on debriefing sessions to figure out if a soldier has been hurt. It is a smart approach for diagnosing an often invisible injury.
