Traumatic Brain Injury and Concussion

Course overview

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is the leading cause of death and disability for individuals under age 45. Three million Americans have a TBI each year, 300000 are admitted to hospitals, and over five million survivors of TBI live with some level of long term disability. It is important for health and mental health professionals to have an updated clinical knowledge about the diagnosis, treatment, and recovery of mild, moderate, and severely injured TBI patients. To help meet the needs for continuing education on this important subject, Dr. Michael E. Howard, PhD has written this researched based six hour program. Dr. Howard is a clinical neuropsychologist with 30 years of experience in the diagnosis and treatment of individuals with TBI. The webinar will describe the structure and function of the brain and why this key organ is so vulnerable to the acceleration and deceleration effects of head trauma. There will be a discussion of how head trauma distorts the brain and damages vulnerable neurons and glial cells to cause the major primary and secondary mechanisms of brain damage. The webinar will demonstrate how the pre injury, peri injury, and post injury risk factors combine to predict the highly variable short term and long term outcomes of TBI. There will be a discussion of various medical, psychological, and therapeutic assessment procedures for mild, moderate, and severe TBI. Advances in acute and post acute treatment and rehabilitation techniques will be described. There will be a special section on the assessment and treatment of mild traumatic brain injury and concussion, including recent advances in managing sports related concussions in athletes. Research on the relationship between moderate to severe TBI and the risk for later dementias like Alzheimers disease will be presented. There will be a thorough discussion on recent research concerning the history, neuropathology, course, and management of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative dementia resulting from multiple subclinical brain traumas. TBI is a preventable injury and techniques to reduce the occurrence and the severity of disability will be presented.