What I’m reading this morning…

The U.S. Department of Defense reports that approximately 30 percent of those evacuated from the battlefield to ­Walter Reed Army Medical Center have traumatic brain injury (TBI). The problem is probably worse than that: the DOD figure does not include brain injuries in soldiers whose wounds were not severe enough to require evacuation or whose injuries were not identified until after they completed their tours. Post-deployment surveys suggest that 10 to 20 percent of all deployed troops have experienced concussions. At worst, thousands of service members could return home with long-lasting problems, ranging from debilitating cognitive deficits to severe headaches and depression to subtler personality changes and memory deficits.

Military doctors are only beginning to get a grasp on the number of soldiers who have suffered mild traumatic brain injury, the medical term for a concussion. Mild injuries are by far the most common type of brain trauma, but they are more easily missed than moderate and severe injuries (they typically don’t show up on standard brain scans), and the lasting effects, especially of repeated concussions, are not yet clear. Surveys of troops to be redeployed in Iraq suggest that 20 to 40 percent still had symptoms of past concussions, including headaches, sleep problems, depression, and memory difficulties. “We don’t know what it means in terms of long-term functional ability,” says William Perry, past president of the National Academy of Neuropsychology.

Another one of those “side effects” of war that will never get the attention it really deserves.