By Thomas Lehrich, President of the Board

Trauma centers across America will begin to test a new approach for assessing traumatic brain injury. This improved assessment should provide accurate diagnoses and more appropriate treatment.

The new framework, which was developed by a coalition of experts and patients from 14 countries and by the National Institutes of Health, expands the assessment beyond immediate clinical symptoms. Added criteria would include biomarkers, CT and MRI scans, and factors such as other medical conditions and how the trauma occurred.

For a little over 50 years, trauma centers have used the Glasgow Coma Scale to assess patients with TBI, dividing them into mild, moderate, and severe categories, based on their level of consciousness and other clinical symptoms. That diagnosis determined the level of care patients received in the emergency department. In the U. S., TBI results in approximately 80 thousand deaths annually and accounts for about half-a-million permanent disabilities each year.