{"id":619,"date":"2010-06-15T12:32:00","date_gmt":"2010-06-15T18:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/waiting.com\/blog\/?p=619"},"modified":"2010-06-22T15:39:21","modified_gmt":"2010-06-22T21:39:21","slug":"too-many-tbis-not-enough-soldiers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/waiting.com\/blog\/2010\/06\/too-many-tbis-not-enough-soldiers.html","title":{"rendered":"Too Many TBI’s, Not Enough Soldiers"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

Our blog yesterday about the Pentagon\u2019s failure to follow through on mandatory testing for brain injury raises numerous issues worth commenting on, including the military\u2019s outright failure to follow orders, the superficial approach to the diagnosis of brain damage and the magnitude of the problem that is being pushed on down the road to the next generation.\u00a0 Yesterday\u2019s blog is here: https:\/\/waiting.com\/blog\/2010\/06\/611.html<\/a><\/p>\r\n

The generals in essence are telling Congress that if they properly treated soldiers for TBI, there just wouldn\u2019t be any soldiers left.\u00a0 They use the term \u201cfalse positives\u201d but that is really short hand for saying that too many soldiers are showing symptoms to treat them all.\u00a0 And frankly, the problem isn\u2019t really the cost of treatment or even the availability of treatment facilities, although the second part of that could certainly get to be an issue.\u00a0 The problem is that if they followed anything close to the protocols for treating athletes with concussions, there might not be anyone left to fight the wars.\u00a0 You see, if we were talking athletes, we wouldn\u2019t allow them to go back into the field until they were completely cleared of Post Concussion symptoms.\u00a0 Our military is already scrambling to find enough soldiers to fight two wars.\u00a0 Put any more on the sidelines and we would have to change our foreign policy.<\/p>\r\n

While I may be one of the few civilians who fully understands the true implications of \u201cno return to play\u201d for soldiers, didn\u2019t we promise to do better with this war?\u00a0 I have been blogging about the Nightmare of War Time Brain Injuries since http:\/\/www.tbilaw.com\/blog\/2008\/06<\/a> (read bottom up) and specifically since http:\/\/www.tbilaw.com\/blog\/2008\/06\/suicide-and-terror-continues-for-our-iraq-and-afghanistan-soldiers.html<\/a><\/p>\r\n

This problem with combat TBI is not a new problem.\u00a0 German, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese artillery and mortars were far more potent than road side bombs.\u00a0 And while it is true that we are saving more severely wounded TBI soldiers, the mild and moderate survival rates are likely unchanged since World War I.\u00a0 What is different is that we have the capacity to diagnose MTBI now and we are supposed to care, because Congress and the American public says so.<\/p>\r\n

The problem isn\u2019t too many false positives.\u00a0 It is too many positives, too many soldiers with brain damage.\u00a0 It has always been true, since the day of the club and it will always be true – combat is hard on the brain. That is why \u00a0the helmet was invented.\u00a0 What we as a society have to accept is that if we are truly to “be there” for our troups, we must pull them out of the field when they get a head injury. \u00a0That means we either have to have more soldiers or fewer military ambitions and then apply all of the best medicine to help them when they do suffer a TBI. If we don’t, the correlation between soldiers, homelessness and suicide will be the same in 2050 as it was in the 20th century.<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our blog yesterday about the Pentagon\u2019s failure to follow through on mandatory testing for brain injury raises numerous issues worth commenting on, including the military\u2019s outright failure to follow orders, the superficial approach to the diagnosis of brain damage and the magnitude of the problem that is being pushed on down the road to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[622,4,621,624,27],"class_list":["post-619","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-brain-injury-and-the-army","tag-brain-injury-attorney","tag-concussions-and-combat","tag-soldiers-and-brain-injury","tag-traumatic-brain-injury"],"yoast_head":"\nToo Many TBI's, Not Enough Soldiers - Brain Injury Lawyer Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/waiting.com\/blog\/2010\/06\/too-many-tbis-not-enough-soldiers.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Too Many TBI's, Not Enough Soldiers - 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