Traumatic Brain Injury Classifications Are Leading to Preventable Deaths, Report Says
3 Feb 2022
Military.com | By Patricia Kime
The terms "mild," "moderate" and "severe," used by doctors to categorize head injuries in roughly 2 million Americans each year, are outdated and imprecise, and treatments based on those terms are leading to increased medical costs and preventable deaths, a group of medical experts wrote in a report published Feb. 1.
At least 439,000 U.S. service members have been diagnosed with brain injuries since 2000, with more than 83% of those classified as "mild" and roughly 36,000 defined as "moderate" or "severe."
These common labels for defining a traumatic brain injury may obscure the severity of head injuries, however, leading to inadequate treatment and potential harm to the patient, according to a report published this week by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2022/02/03/traumatic-brain-injury-classifications-are-leading-preventable-deaths-report-says.html
