The heartbreak of brain break
Rajul Jandial is a neurosurgeon at UC San Diego and scientist at Burnham Institute for Medical Research in La Jolla and he writes his thoughts on TBI. It's tough to turn on the television without seeing Dr. Robert Jarvik, inventor of the artificial heart, talking about his favorite cholesterol drug, Lipitor. More Americans suffer traumatic brain injuries than heart attacks, but the issue is only now capturing our attention, but you'll find nothing advertising a drug that might help people with traumatic brain injury. Yet more Americans suffer a brain injury every year, than suffer heart attacks. Most who suffer a brain injury are young. Given their average lifespan and the nature of their injuries, those young people with brain injuries will require many more years of care than will the elderly or middle aged who suffer heart attacks. So, where's the TBI commercial? More important, where's the TBI drug? Since the biology of brain injury is so poorly understood, there isn't a medication that might serve as motivation for pharmaceutical companies to promote TBI awareness.
