View clinical trials related to Traumatic Brain Injury.
Filter by:Each year in the United States alone, 300,000 persons are hospitalized for traumatic brain injury, with approximately one quarter dying. Despite advances in aggressive neurosurgical interventions, intensive care monitoring and overall supportive management, many of those who do "survive" do not fully recover and are left with a varying degree of permanent disability. It is therefore imperative that new methods of early interventions be explored. One possible road to effective therapy is to examine the timing of secondary injury via a biological marker, to help guide the timing of treatment directed specifically at early oxidant injury. A more thorough understanding of how quickly oxidant injury occurs will allow us to direct appropriate therapies targeted directly at oxidant injury within what is currently thought to be a very narrow window of opportunity for intervention, possibly peaking within the first two hours after the initial injury. Potential participants include patients between the ages of 18 and 50 years who are admitted to Parkland Memorial Hospital with a diagnosis of severe traumatic brain injury. Blood, urine, and CSF (if patient requires a clinically indicated ventriculostomy) will be collected over the first 5 days post-injury. Clinically-relevant patient progress, clinically required interventions, neuro-imaging results, and demographics will be tracked while the patient is hospitalized, with final neurological outcome measured at 3 months.
Strict glycemic control improves mortality and morbidity of patients admitted to the postoperative intensive care unit (ICU). The investigators would like to know if this therapy could improve the long term neurologic and cognitive outcomes of patients treated for acute subarachnoid hemorrhage with either a surgical or intravascular approach.
Adults who sustain brain damage due to stroke, traumatic injury or surgery may develop difficulty finding words. This study compares the effectiveness of two behavior-based programs to improve picture naming ability in these individuals.
The purpose of our study is to verify wherever normothermia (achieved with diclofenac administration) may improve intracranial pressure control and may limit secondary cerebral damage thus positively influencing outcome in patients with acute cerebral damage admitted to ICU.
This study is designed to examine the effects of a wake-promoting agent (Modafinil) on working memory (WM) in persons with moderate to severe TBI utilizing a double blinded placebo controlled methodology. Our approach is to evaluate participants with BOLD fMRI and a limited neuropsychological battery to examine WM performance before and after pharmacological intervention. Hypotheses 1. Because increased cognitive effort (as a function of decreased efficiency after TBI) is presumed to underlie fMRI activation dispersion that is seen during central executive WM tasks, we anticipate an attenuation of cerebral activation in prefrontal cortex during pharmacological intervention with Modafinil when compared to placebo administration on the mPASAT and vigilance testing. 2. There will be a correlation between the decreased dispersion of the fMRI signal on scans and improvement in neuropsychological measures when individuals are on Modafinil that is not seen when they are taking placebo.
This study will use MRI imaging, cognitive testing and outcome questionnaires to determine how the brain recovers and reorganizes after an injury.
This study will test a method of measuring brain blood flow called near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). It will determine whether NIRS gives the same results as the more commonly used technique, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Healthy normal volunteers between 18 and 60 years of age may be eligible for this study. Participants come to the NIH up to six times for experiments using NIRS and fMRI. They do the following tasks while they are undergoing NIRS or fMRI: - looking at a computer monitor while a checkerboard pattern changes - wiggling the toes and moving the fingers - Reading words on a computer screen and pushing one button if they are plants and another if they are animals. For NIRS, a frame is placed on the head and held it in place with a metal band. The frame holds sensors that contact the scalp. For fMRI, the subject lies on a table that can slide in and out of an MRI scanner, a metal cylinder surrounded by a strong magnetic field. fMRI uses a strong magnetic field and radio waves to obtain images of the brain while the subject performs tasks. During the procedure, The subject wears earplugs to muffle the sound of loud knocking noises that occur during scanning.
The purpose of this study is to determine whether memantine (Namenda) improves memory and attention in patients with mild to moderate traumatic brain injury.
The objective of this prospective study is to evaluate the reliability of plain x-rays vs.cranial computed tomography as a screening method for skull fractures and its prognostic value for intracranial bleeding (ICB).
Introduction and Aims: The objective of this prospective study is to evaluate the risk factors of minor head injury in all consecutive patients of one year.