Fort Carson to Test for Brain Injuries
In Fort Carson Colorado, the Army is faced with thousands of cases of brain injury from the Iraq war and will soon begin testing brain scanning equipment in hopes of finding a more accurate way to identify hard-to-diagnose wounds. Fort Carson hopes to get a new scanning camera soon, that uses gamma rays and radioisotopes, Col. John Cho, commander of the Evans Army Community Hospital at Fort Carson, said. To date, the Army has not extensively used neuroimaging equipment to detect brain injuries in returning soldiers because not enough testing has been done to judge the technology's effectiveness. The move to try to detect brain injuries comes after a recent study at Fort Carson found that 18 percent of troops who had been to Iraq, 2,392 of 13,400 suffered at least some brain damage from the blasts of improvised explosive devices. "They are taking head injuries seriously," said Dr. P. Stephen Macedo, a Washington, D.C.-based neurologist and former doctor with the Veterans Administration.
