The American Academy of Neurology Guidelines ranks the severity of a concussion into 3 grades:   Grade I   - Confusion, symptoms last < 15 minutes, no loss of consciousness,   Grade II   - Symptoms last > 15 minutes, no loss of consciousness, and   Grade III   - Loss of consciousness

Common Concussion Symptoms:

FEB 4, 2010 | By Daily Mail | Reposted by: Cullotta Law Offices - (847) 651-7191

Patient in a vegetative state 'talks' to scientists

British scientists are hailing a world-first ' conversation' with a man diagnosed as being in a permanent vegetative state. They say the breakthrough has enormous implications for the care and treatment of vegetative patients. With the ability to communicate, patients could request pain relief, or even indicate if they wanted to end their life. 

 

  The answers that proved a road accident victim was not in a 'vegetative state'

Dr Adrian Owen, who led the Medical Research Council team in Cambridge, said: 'They can now have some involvement in their destiny.'

To the outside world, the 29-year-old patient  -  who suffered a severe head injury in a road accident in 2003  -  appeared unconscious and incapable of communicating.

But Dr Owen's team used a brain scanner to tap into his thoughts and monitor how he reacted to questions.

The man answered 'yes' or 'no' by conjuring up imaginary scenes that signalled a response.

Experts say the breakthrough 'changes everything' about classifying consciousness disorders.

The man was among 23 patients a control group of healthy volunteers recruited for a three-year study by Medical Research Council scientists and colleagues from the University of Liege in Belgium. 

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to measure activity in two different brain regions registering motor and spatial responses while the patients imagined specific scenes.

   

Closed world: The patient was in a permanent vegetative state (posed by model)

Magnetic fields and radio waves detected blood-flow surges in each area which 'lit up' the scans.

For the 'motor' task, patients were asked to imagine standing on a tennis court and swinging an arm to return balls from an instructor.

To activate the 'spatial' region, they had to imagine walking from room to room in their home.

In four patients, the scans detected activity in the appropriate brain region as they carried out the scientists' verbal instructions.

But the 29-year-old man, who had produced reliable responses, was singled out for an even more remarkable test, says the New England Journal of Medicine. 

Told to use 'motor' or 'spatial' imagery as 'yes' and 'no' answers, he correctly answered the first five of six autobiographical questions.  

He was asked 'is your father's name Alexander?' andcorrectly answered 'yes' by imagining the tennis scene. When he was asked 'is your father's name Thomas?' he answered 'no' by thinking about walking around the house.

When the sixth question was asked, virtually no activity was seen. Scientists believe the patient had fallen asleep or simply failed to hear the question.

Dr Owen said: 'We were astonished when we saw the results of the patient's scan.

'Not only did these scans tell us that the patient was not in a vegetative state, but, more importantly, for the first time in years it provided the patient with a way of communicating his thoughts to the outside world.'

He said fMRI scanning was an expensive tool but in future, computer devices might help patients to communicate whether they needed pain relief or would like to try new drugs.

He said: 'Just for patients to exercise some autonomy is a massive step forward.'

There are normally fewer than 100 patients in the UK in a permanent vegetative state (PVS) at any time. PVS is diagnosed in patients who have been in a coma for three years without being able to communicate or have any understanding of what is being said.

If you have suffered a recent traumatic brain injury as a result of someone else's wrong doing, please call Cullotta Law Offices at (847) 651-7191 to speak with an experienced Illinois Spinal Injury Lawyer today or click below to learn more.

FEB 4, 2010 | US NEWS 

Brain Scans Suggest Some Vegetative Patients May Be Aware -- but researchers caution against giving families false hope

     Some patients thought to be in a vegetative state actually show signs of consciousness when assessed with a brain scan. A team of British and Belgian neuroscientists conducted functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) on 54 patients who were diagnosed as being in a vegetative or a minimally conscious state because of traumatic brain injury, brain stem stroke, meningitis or other brain injury.

     When the patients were asked to think about hitting a tennis ball or walking around their home or neighborhood, brain scans for five of them showed they could "willfully modulate their brain activity," or show evidence of conscious thought, said lead study author Martin Monti, a neuroscientist at the Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge, England.

     Researchers could tell the brain activity was conscious thought because the patients' brain activity was similar to that of healthy controls performing the same mental tasks, according to the study in the Feb. 2 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

     Additional tests found three patients could follow commands or make small movements that further showed some level of awareness. Two had been considered vegetative and one minimally conscious. In the other two, however, researchers could not find any discernible evidence that they could respond.

     As a result of the testing, four patients originally diagnosed as being in a vegetative state were reclassified as being minimally conscious.“There is no 'consciousness meter' we can put next to the brain and say if someone is conscious. We can only look at how people behave and infer if they are conscious or not," Monti said. "The problem is behavior is not always a good measure of consciousness. fMRI seems to be one way of determining if a patient who is not responsive behaviorally is, in fact, conscious.”

      Patients in a vegetative state appear to awaken after a coma but show no signs of awareness of self or their environment. Though their eyes are open, they have no purposeful actions, explained Dr. Allan Ropper, a neurologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, who wrote an accompanying editorial. Their behavior is limited to reflexive behaviors, such as roving eye movements, swallowing or yawning.

      The minimally conscious state is a newer term that describes patients with very limited and erratic verbal or motor responses to a spoken voice or other external stimuli.

     The research raises provocative questions about the nature of consciousness and self-awareness, Ropper said. Even if brain scans show hints of residual consciousness, "the question is, what does it mean? That is what people are going to have to grapple with," Ropper said. "It has to do with what you think life is and what is a meaningful life. Those are social, cultural and theological questions." Ropper also cautioned against families gleaning a false sense of hope.

      Evidence of consciousness was found in only a small percentage of patients. And all of those were patients who had suffered traumatic brain injury, not "anoxic" brain injury caused by a lack of oxygen from, say, cardiac arrest.

     The ultimate hope is that brain scans could one day enable some level of communication, said Dr. Joseph Fins, a professor of medicine and public health and chief of the division of medical ethics at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City. "

     Restoring communication is the holy grail," Fins said. "The thing that families overwhelmingly want is for their loved one to be able to express their wishes, and to know that their loved one is not in pain. These are things that could profoundly impact the decisions of families found in the difficult situation of caring for someone who is vegetative or minimally consciousness."

     In the study, the patient who came closest to that was a man in his 20s who had suffered traumatic brain injury at least five years earlier in a traffic accident, Monti said.

     His brain scan showed he was able to correctly answer questions such as, "Is your father's name Alexander?" though he could not verbalize or show through any movement that he could respond. "We tried very hard to communicate at the bedside, but that remained impossible," Monti said. "But it is still the case that we managed to give him, to a little extent, a voice. In a sense there was a very positive outcome. We managed to interact. This is an extremely exciting thing." In some ways, the research raises many more questions than it answers, Monti added. "

     The human brain, even though we are learning more and more about it, is extremely mysterious to us in many ways," Monti said. "We are still struggling to understand the meaning of what it means to be conscious or to have streams of thought or self- awareness."

     If you have suffered a recent traumatic brain injury as a result of someone else's wrong doing, contact CULLOTTA LAW OFFICES at (847) 651-7191 to speak with an an experienced Illinois Brain Injury Attorney today or click below to learn more.   CULLOTTA LAW - 'vegetative patients', 'life-sustaining' 

FEB 4, 2010 | GAZETTE

FEB 4, 2010 | BusinessWeek

The Illinois Supreme Court struck down the state’s $500,000 cap on awards for pain and suffering in medical malpractice lawsuits against doctors, finding that the limits set by the Legislature violate the state constitution’s separation of powers principle.

FEB 4, 2010 | Illinois Supreme Court Summaries Opinion Filed Feruary 4, 2010

Lebron v. Gottlieb Memorial Hospital - Nos. 105741, 105745 cons.  

 Direct appeal from the circuit court of Cook County.

       CHIEF JUSTICE FITZGERALD delivered the judgment of the court, with opinion. Justices Freeman, Kilbride and Burke concurred in the judgment and opinion. Justice Karmeier concurred in part and dissented in part, with opinion, joined by Justice Garman. Justice Thomas took no part in the decision.

      In 2005, a statutory provision, part of Public Act 94–677, took effect in Illinois that places limits on awards for noneconomic damages, such as pain and suffering, in medical malpractice cases. The total limit is $1 million for hospitals and their personnel and $500,000 for doctors.

      Shortly after the effective date of this enactment, a baby who was born by Caesarean section was found to have numerous permanent injuries. Suit was filed against Gottlieb Memorial Hospital in Melrose Park, the doctor, and an assisting nurse.

      This litigation is the lead case in a number of lawsuits which raise the same issue and which the circuit court of Cook County consolidated.

      As part of their complaint, the plaintiffs sought a declaratory judgment that the damage limitation was invalid on constitutional grounds and later moved for partial judgment on the pleadings on this question. The circuit court granted the relief requested by the plaintiffs, and, because of inseverability wording in the enactment in which the provision is contained, declared the entire enactment invalid. This direct appeal to the Illinois Supreme Court followed.

      In this decision, the supreme court reversed as unnecessary the circuit court’s judgment holding the statute unconstitutional as applied, but affirmed the finding that, under the Illinois Constitution, the statute is facially invalid on separation of powers grounds.

      The supreme court said that the damage limitation violates the constitutional principle of separation of powers by interfering with the authority of the judicial branch to reduce verdicts. What the statute allows for amounts to a “legislative remittitur.” The supreme court agreed with the circuit court that, because the challenged provision is not severable, the entire statute is invalid. However, the legislature is free to reenact the other provisions.

      The cause was remanded to the circuit court for further proceedings.

FEB 2, 2010 | GOLD COAST MALL 

Quadriplegic man teaches children how to avoid spinal injuries

Martin Hume suffered a spinal injury when he broke his neck during a wakeboarding accident inAustralia, the Gold Coast Mail reported. The quadriplegic man is now teaching a university course using on how to avoid spinal injuries.  After 11-months of inpatient rehabilitation, the quadriplegic man is now using the Spinal Injury Association's Spinal Education Awareness Team (SEAT) programme to teach children about the risky behavior that can lead to spinal injuries. Mr. Hume is also starting a university course in 2010 and focus on a business he has created called Ensure Access

If you have suffered a recent spinal injury as a result of someone else's wrong doing, please call Cullotta Law Offices at (847) 651-7191 to speak with an experienced Illinois Spinal Injury Lawyer today or click below to learn more.

o  Spinal Cord Injury Information

o  Location of Spinal Cord Injuries

o  Functional Levels of Spinal Cord Injuries

FEB 2, 2010 | RIC.org

CULLOTTA LAW OFFICES | (847) 651-7191 | Illinois Brain And Spinal Injury Attorneys 

 FEB 1, 2010 | NEWS  

paralysed man to carry torch 

A man sustained a spinal cord injury in a car accident at the age of 15 and has been paralysed from the waist down is to be the community torchbearer in the Olympic Torch Relay.  Mr Hansen has won 19 international wheelchair marathons and six medals as a Paralympian since the accident. Mr. Hansen raised $26 million dollars for spinal cord injury research and programmes aimed at improving the quality of life of people with such injuries.

CULLOTTA LAW OFFICES | (847) 651-7191 | Illinois Brain And Spinal Injury Attorneys 

 FEB 1, 2010  | AZ REPORTER

student returns to school after spinal injury

A girl student sustained a spinal injury while playing football on December 19 sport has returned to school after just five weeks of recovery. The football accident resulted in paralysis of her lower body, the Arizona Republic reports. Doctors believe that the youngster will learn to walk again and will eventually be able to run and, potentially, play football.  Last week, biotherapeutics company Neuralstem Incorporated completed the first spinal cord stem cell treatment in the US, which, if proved to be effective, could potentially help in treating spinal cord injuries.