The Concussion Assessment and Response: Sport Version (CARE-Sport Version) is a new app from PAR that helps athletic trainers, team physicians, and other health care professionals assess and respond to a potential concussion—one of the most common yet serious medical situations for athletes at all levels.

From the instant a player is injured, the app guides users through a series of questions and activities that helps rule out a cervical spine injury, evaluate concussion signs and symptoms, and assess cranial nerve function. Designed for the iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Android device or tablet, the app is now available for download from the Apple App Store or Android Marketplace.

The CARE-Sport Version app features:

• The Balance Error Scoring System (BESS), which evaluates an athlete’s ability to maintain postural stability, providing important information about loss of balance in an injured athlete.
• The Sideline Assessment of Concussion (SAC), which assesses the mental status of the athlete—it addresses orientation, immediate memory, concentration, and memory recall.
• A Graded Symptom Checklist (GSC), which enables users to track the severity of post-concussion symptoms during the athlete’s recovery process.
• A Return-to-Play Guide, which helps protect athletes from further injury by guiding them through a gradual daily physical exercise routine that tests their tolerance for exertional activity.
• A Concussion Information Section, which helps ensure that users have a comprehensive understanding of concussions as well as the function of the CARE-Sport Version.
• The ACE Post-Concussion Home/School Instructions, an instructional page that users can share with non-medical personnel, including coaches, parents, and athletes, to guide early management of the athlete following a concussion.

PAR’s CARE-Sport Version app was developed by concussion experts Jason Mihalik, PhD, CAT, ATC, Assistant Professor at the Matthew A. Gfeller Sport-Related Traumatic Brain Injury Research Center at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; and Gerard A. Gioia, PhD, Director of the Division of Pediatric Neuropsychology at the Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, DC.

Image Courtesy of   sportgraphic / Shutterstock.com

The article PAR Releases Mobile App for Athletes to Assess Concussions appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

Cord Blood Registry (CBR) is the exclusive partner for a growing number of clinical researchers focusing on the use of a child’s own cord blood stem cells to help treat pediatric brain injury and acquired hearing loss.

To ensure consistency in cord blood stem cell processing, storage and release for infusion, three separate trials have included CBR in their FDA-authorized protocol—including two at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) working in partnership with Children’s Memorial Hermann Hospital, and a third at Georgia Health Sciences University, home of the Medical College of Georgia (MCG). This makes CBR the only family stem cell bank pairing researchers with prospective patients for these studies.

“Partnering with a series of specialists who want to research the use of a child’s own newborn blood stem cells on a variety of disease states allows CBR to help advance medical research for regenerative therapies by connecting the child whose family banked with CBR to appropriate researchers,” said Heather Brown, MS, CGC, Vice President of Scientific & Medical Affairs at Cord Blood Registry.

“The pediatric specialists from UTHealth, Children’s Memorial Hermann Hospital, and Georgia Health Sciences University are at the forefront of stem cell research as they evaluate cord blood stem cells’ ability to help facilitate the healing process after damage to nerves and tissue.”

Hearing Loss and Traumatic Brain Injury Clinical Trials Break New Ground Sensorineural hearing loss affects approximately 6 per 1,000 children by 18 years of age, with 9 percent resulting from acquired causes such as viral infection and head injury. The Principal Investigator of the hearing loss study is Samer Fakhri, M.D., surgeon at Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center and associate professor and program director in the Department of Otorhinolaryngology – Head & Neck Surgery at UTHealth.

He is joined by James Baumgartner, M.D., sponsor of the study and guest research collaborator for this first-of-its-kind FDA-regulated, Phase 1 safety study of the use of cord blood stem cells to treat children with acquired hearing loss. The trial follows evidence from published studies in animals that cord blood treatment can repair damaged organs in the inner ear. Clients of CBR who have sustained a post-birth hearing loss and are 6 weeks to 2 years old may be eligible for the year-long study.

“The window of opportunity to foster normal language development is limited,” said James Baumgartner, M.D.  ”This is the first study of its kind with the potential to actually restore hearing in children and allow for more normal speech and language development.”

Although the neurologic outcome for nearly all types of brain injury (with the exception of abuse) is better for children than adults, trauma is the leading cause of death in children, and the majority of the deaths are attributed to head injury.Distinguished professor of pediatric surgery and pediatrics at UTHealth, Charles S. Cox, M.D. launched an innovative study building on a growing portfolio of research using stem cell-based therapies for neurological damage.

The study will enroll 10 children ages 18 months to 17 years who have umbilical cord blood banked with CBR and have suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI) and are enrolled in the study within 6-18 months of sustaining the injury. Read more about the trial here.

“The reason we have become interested in cord blood cells is because of the possibility of autologous therapy, meaning using your own cells. And the preclinical models have demonstrated some really fascinating neurological preservation effects to really support these Phase 1 trials,” says Charles S. Cox, M.D., principle investigator of the trial.

“There’s anecdotal experience in other types of neurological injuries that reassures us in terms of the safety of the approach and there are some anecdotal hints at it being beneficial in certain types of brain injury.”

Georgia Health Sciences University (GHSU) Focuses on Cerebral Palsy

At the GHSU in Augusta, Dr. James Carroll, professor and chief of pediatric neurology, embarked on the first FDA-regulated clinical trial to determine whether an infusion of stem cells from a child’s own umbilical cord blood can improve the quality of life for children with cerebral palsy. The study will include 40 children whose parents have stored their cord blood at CBR and meet inclusion criteria.

“Using a child’s own stem cells as a possible treatment is the safest form of stem cell transplantation because it carries virtually no threat of immune system rejection,” said Dr. Carroll. “Our focus on cerebral palsy breaks new ground in advancing therapies to change the course of these kinds of brain injury—a condition for which there is currently no cure.”

Cerebral palsy, caused by a brain injury or lack of oxygen in the brain before birth or during the first few years of life, can impair movement, learning, hearing, vision and cognitive skills. Two to three children in 1,000 are affected by it, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

Cord Blood Stem Cell Infusions Move From the Lab to the Clinic

These multi-year studies are a first step to move promising pre-clinical or animal research of cord blood stem cells into clinical trials in patients. Through the CBR Center for Regenerative Medicine, CBR will continue to partner with physicians who are interested in advancing cellular therapies in regenerative applications.

“The benefits of cord blood stem cells being very young, easy to obtain, unspecialized cells which have had limited exposure to environmental toxins or infectious diseases and easy to store for long terms without any loss of function, make them an attractive source for cellular therapy researchers today,” adds Brown.

“We are encouraged to see interest from such diverse researchers from neurosurgeons to endocrinologists and cardiac specialists.”

The article Cord Blood Stem Cells to Help Treat Pediatric Brain Injury appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.

When Army Sgt. Victor Medina returned home from Iraq in the summer of 2009, his life was a shambles. His tour had been cut short after he suffered a concussion during a roadside blast. Though his injury wasn’t visible, he struggled with balance and noticed that his ability to read, think and even talk had changed for the worse.

But in the spring of 2011, Medina became one of the first patients at the National Intrepid Center of Excellence, the military’s $65 million, state-of-the-art treatment center for brain-injured soldiers.

During his three weeks at the Bethesda, Md., center, the staff developed a rehabilitation program designed specifically for Medina. His recovery has progressed rapidly ever since, he and his wife, Roxana Delgado, told ProPublica and NPR.

Medina has continued to work from El Paso, Texas, by videoconference with a speech therapist based at the center, and he said his stutter is improving. After his injury, he had struggled to read more than a paragraph; now he says he can read and absorb two pages in one sitting. Medina also was ordered to stop driving after his injury, but he told ProPublica and NPR that he has regained his ability to do that, too.

“It’s like night and day,” Delgado said of his improvement.

The couple believes that Medina benefited dramatically from media attention. In June 2010, ProPublica and NPR published stories [1] about the couple’s struggle to get medical treatment for Medina at Fort Bliss, Texas, where he was stationed at the time. The Army’s vice chief of staff, Gen. Peter Chiarelli, denounced the reports at a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee as a “disservice … to everyone.” But a year later, Chiarelli flew the couple to Washington so they could talk privately to top commanders about their battles at Fort Bliss, and how to improve treatment for troops with TBI.

Last year, Medina became one of NICOE’s first patients. He received more than 100 hours of personalized treatment from neurologists, psychologists, physical therapists and others at the center, a NICOE spokesman said. Medina also had access to some of the center’s virtual-reality equipment, which is used to simulate ordinary civilian activities like crossing the street and driving a car.

Delgado and Medina have become advocates for victims of traumatic brain injury [2], or TBI, the signature injury of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. Last week, Delgado was invited to attend President Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech as a guest of Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, whose district includes part of Fort Bliss.

In an interview with ProPublica and NPR before the speech, Delgado said the invitation was “very empowering because it tells me that leadership and people in Congress are paying attention to traumatic brain injuries,” she said.

But not every soldier with a brain injury has been as fortunate as Medina.

Delgado told ProPublica and NPR that she frequently receives calls from military wives who’ve had a hard time getting their husbands enrolled at NICOE, which has treated only about 200 soldiers since it opened in October 2011, center spokesman Joshua Stueve told ProPublica and NPR.

By comparison, recent estimates show that nearly 230,000 soldiers have been diagnosed with traumatic brain injuries, Stueve said. “We aren’t going to make a huge dent in that population,” said Stueve. Most of the center’s $35 million budget is spent on research, not clinical care, he noted.

To get into the program, a service member must be referred by a physician at his or her local military hospital, agree to live with other soldiers in a group house near the facility, and plan to continue military service after treatment.

Brain-injured troops who don’t plan on staying in the military have to rely on U.S. Veterans Affairs Department hospitals for treatment once they get out. But VA hospitals don’t have the same resources or equipment as NICOE.

Stueve said troops at NICOE benefit from being treated by an “inverted system” in which a soldier has the opportunity to work with perhaps 10 doctors at once, instead of being at a hospital where there might be just one doctor for every 10 patients. The advantage, he said, is that a patient isn’t shuffled to separate referrals from multiple specialists over the course of treatment.

Stueve said the center “doesn’t keep data” on how many soldiers are rejected, and handles only 20 patients at a time for about four weeks of concentrated treatment.

“The real story here is patient experience,” Stueve said. “The service members, when they come here, they feel like they are in control, and they play a huge part in their own treatment.”

Delgado agrees but said she knows “that’s not the case for all service members, because some are denied a chance to go to NICOE. This should be the standard of care for everybody.”

The Pentagon plans to expand the NICOE system to other bases, Stueve said, but that effort could be stymied by pending defense budget cuts. The defense department is drafting a plan to cut $259 billion from its budget over the next five years.

The military is already having problems with its budgets for TBI and post-traumatic stress disorder. In a recent report [3] to Congress, the Government Accountability Office said the defense department can’t provide reliable data on how it spent $2.7 billion allocated to treat soldiers with brain injuries and psychological health problems.

By Joaquin Sapien, ProPublica, and Daniel Zwerdling, NPR Jan. 30, 2012, 1:24 p.m.From reporting by NPR, ProPublica and Frontline, Sept. 8, 2010

The article One Soldier’s Progress Against Traumatic Brain Injury appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.