Simple Salves for Severe Brain Injuries

Summary

Imagine that you or a loved one is involved in a car crash, and the impact produced a severe traumatic brain injury (TBI). The extent of the damage is unknown at this point, but there is unconsciousness and lasting brain damage. Wouldn't you want doctors in the intensive care unit (ICU) to be able to treat you right away? Well, scientists and doctors are coming close to that with new healing methods. This article discusses how the "simple salves for traumatic brain injuries" work and what they do to the brain.

After a sever TBI, blood vessels can bleed into the brain, raising the pressure inside the skull. These vessels may even dilate to feed oxygen-starved brain, regions, increasing the brain volume which increases the pressure. This pressure build-up may even cause the brain to be pushed through the only available hole, at the base of the skull, crushing the brain stem and killing the patient. The doctors must slow metabolism and thereby reduce the brain's demand for oxygen rich blood. A new technique doctors are using is called hypothermia therapy. This is when doctors inject chilled saline or cover a patient with a blanket that circulates cool water, "quieting" the brain by lowering the patient's body temperature. The cooling acts as a "brake" on cellular metabolism. A 2007 analysis by the Brain Trauma Foundation suggested that hypothermia therapy had little or no effect on the survival rate of TBI victims, but it did improve their mental capacity and responsiveness.

Another concern to TBI victims is the release of biological poisons that ooze out of ruptured neurons and cause serious problems on neighboring cells. You can monitor the chemical imbalances by performing an analysis on extracted fluid from inside the skull. But doctors want to prevent the release of these toxins. Biomedical engineer Richard Borgens of Purdue University and his colleagues are developing a method that repairs cell membranes using polyethylene glycol, which is bicycle tire sealant. They did tests on brain-injured rats and found that the rats that received injections of polyethylene glycol navigated mazes more proficiently than ones that didn't receive the injection. Scientists do not know if the same thing will happen in humans, but they hope it will.

Doctors hope that advances in intensive care for TBI victims will reduce the long term effects of their brain injury. New discoveries, that will only occur through more research, will improve the lives of brain injury victims each year.

My Response

This article game me a little bit of an idea of how difficult and stressful a brain surgeon's line of work is. There's so much they must be concerned with. The new potential healings discussed in the article are quite fascinating. The fact that bicycle tire sealant can be used as a method for repairing damaged cell membranes is remarkable. I really enjoyed reading about this article. It was well written and easy to understand. I look forward to seeing what progress is made in the treatment of traumatic brain injury victims.

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