Trauma is the leading cause of death of people from 1 to 44 years of age. Traumatic brain injury is the main determinant for mortality and morbidity caused by trauma. Outcome prediction is one of the major problems related to severe traumatic brain injury because clinical evaluation has an unreliable predictive value and complicates identification of patients with higher risk of developing seco...

http://ccn.aacnjournals.org Denise M. Lemke has 27 years of experience as a staff nurse in a neurological intensive care unit, as a neurosurgical coordinator, as a nurse practitioner in neurosurgery, as a nurse practitioner in interventional neuroradiology, and currently as a neurocritical care nurse practitioner in the department of neurology. She has a special interest in traumatic brain inju...

Aim: The aim of this study was to evaluate the alteration of serum electrolytes and arterial blood gases as a secondary insult in patients with severe closed traumatic brain injury and to estimate its impact on patients' outcome. Materials and Methods: 80 patients with severe closed traumatic brain injury were admitted to neurosurgical intensive care unit between November 2013 and November 2014...

The aim of the present study was to assess the functioning of the different subsystems of working memory after severe traumatic brain injury (TBI). A total of 30 patients with severe chronic TBI and 28 controls received a comprehensive assessment of working memory addressing the phonological loop (forward and backward digit span; word length and phonological similarity effects), the visuospatia...

Traumatic brain injury can cause persistent challenges including problems with learning and memory. Previous studies suggest that the activation of the cannabinoid 1 receptor after a traumatic brain injury could be beneficial. We tested the hypothesis that posttraumatic brain injury administration of a cannabinoid 1 receptor agonist can rescue deficits in learning and memory. Young adult male r...

Bloodletting at Jing points has been used to treat coma in traditional Chinese medicine. Mild induced hypothermia has also been shown to have neuroprotective effects. However, the therapeutic effects of bloodletting at Jing points and mild induced hypothermia alone are limited. Therefore, we investigated whether combined treatment might have clinical effectiveness for the treatment of acute sev...

The critical role of ATP-binding cassette B1 (ABCB1) in the function of the blood-brain barrier led us to conducted this prospective study in order to investigate the clinical outcome of patients suffering from severe traumatic brain injury. A total of 182 patients with traumatic brain injury were included in our study. Genotyping of ABCB1 C3435T and G2677T/A was conducted using polymerase chai...

Introduction: Brain injury is an important cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide and so far, there has been no absolute treatment for the damaged brain tissue. Using human stem cells with self-assembling scaffolds can be a promising method for treatment of traumatic brain injury. Materials and Methods: Human meningioma stem cells were isolated, cultured and then expanded into in vitro cond...

To date, there are only a few, non-evidence based, cerebroprotective therapeutic strategies for treatment and, accordingly, for prevention of secondary brain injuries following severe closed head trauma. In order to develop new therapy strategies, existing realistic animal models need to be advanced. The objective is to bridge standardized small animal models and actual patient medical care, si...