ROANOKE, Va. – Carilion Clinic is leading groundbreaking research on concussions and brain injuries.
Carilion received a $3.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to study how simple bloodwork and diagnostic tests can better diagnose brain injuries. That, in turn, can help patients recover and prevent further damage.
Due to testing limitations, emergency physicians often diagnose brain injuries incorrectly, resulting in missed follow-up and potentially debilitating symptoms down the road for patients. When it comes to something as common as concussions, an accurate tool does not currently exist to diagnose the injuries rapidly.
The grant from the National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) has also been awarded to Richmond-based BRAINBox Solutions and the University of Pennsylvania to develop a new way to diagnose brain injuries in the elderly.
Currently, in the medical field, CT scans are used but are often inaccurate. So doctors say having a tool that can quickly and accurately diagnose a brain injury has huge potential.
“It is incredibly exciting to be able to solve one of the most frustrating problems, certainly in emergency medicine today,” said Dr. Damon Kuehl, the vice-chair of research with Carilion Clinic’s Department of Emergency Medicine. “And also directly impact outcomes of patients who, it’s millions of patients a year who will benefit from this.”
While many associate concussions with sports, only 3 to 4% of head injuries are in athletes who visit emergency departments. In fact, U.S. adults over the age of 75 have had the highest incidence of traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) since 2013. The rates of geriatric mild TBIs (mTBIs) and subsequent mortality have doubled in the past decade.
The research occurs in two phases. The first step is enrolling patients and designing a new panel of blood markers and cognitive testing to identify brain injury in all elderly patients, even those with cognitive impairment such as dementia. Phase two will utilize phase one data to determine the tests’ accuracy.
The geriatric TBI study will enroll 300 patients with head trauma and 70 patients as controls starting this summer. Each patient will be followed for a year, and patients will be enrolled over a 2-year period. The final 100 patients enrolled will be followed until their final year. The study will last 3.5 years.