Classifying Brain Injury as a Chronic Disease
I recently mentioned that the Brain Injury Association of America offers a very insightful publication, THE Challenge! One article of note I’d like to point out is Classifying Brain Injury as a Chronic Disease, by by Brent Masel, M.D., President and Medical Director of the Transitional Learning Center, Galveston, Texas.
Dr. Masel correctly notes that “implicit in the nomenclature traumatic brain injury, is the notion that trauma to the brain is the result of an injury and that the injury will heal….However, this is not the case with TBI.” Dr. Masel notes that while most of the 1.7 million people who sustain a traumatic brain injury annually go on to full recovery, more than 125,000 of these are permanent and incurable. For these 125,000, the classification of traumatic brain injury as a “disease” is more appropriate than that of “injury.” This is “why it is imperative that the medical insurance industry, medical community and the community-at-large, understand TBI as a disease state that is progressive in that, over time, it has deleterious affects on other organ systems.” Dr. Masel makes this statement from the viewpoint that scientific data exists showing chronic TBI is neither acute nor static but implicates multiple organ systems, is disease-causative and disease-accelerative. Dr. Masel states “Classification of TBI as the beginning of a disease process would facilitate treatment as outlined for full continuum of care, which should be paid for by medical insurers and managed on a par with other diseases.”