Traumatic Brain Injury
Do you feel like you are not yourself
after your accident?
Information about Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)
Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) encompasses a wide range of brain injuries with profound consequences. Yet often these injuries are neglected, misdiagnosed, and ignored.
What is Traumatic Brain Injury?
TBI is brain injury that occurs after a sudden, external, physical assault to the brain. It is a major cause of death and disability in the United States. Common causes of TBI injuries include falls, motor vehicle crashes, assaults, slip and fall accidents, and explosions where a bump, blow, or a jolt to the head is sustained.
Per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), about 190 Americans die from TBI-related injury each day in 2021, which translates to over 69,000 TBI-related deaths annually. However, these estimates do not account for those who suffer from TBI and do not seek treatment. Additionally, approximately 80,000-90,000 individuals who sustain a TBI suffer from long-term disability. Traumatic brain injuries can be debilitating and devasting.
Symptoms of TBI are as variable as the injuries sustained. Frequently reported symptoms include short-term memory loss and confusion, difficulty concentrating, increased anger and irritability, depression, anxiety, tinnitus, dizziness, photophobia, headaches, and fatigue, just to name a few. Symptoms that persist beyond three months post-injury are classified under post-concussive syndrome (PCS).
Diagnosis of TBI
Why is TBI so difficult to identify? With traditional diagnostic methods like CT and MRI, these brain injuries may appear invisible as these methods measure hemorrhage, edema, vascular injury, and intracranial pressure. However, most cases of TBI often show no abnormalities.
With state-of-the-art advanced brain MRI known as DTI (Diffusion Tensor Imaging), it can accurately detect and document subtle injuries that interfere with the normal functioning of the operating circuits of the brain.
We use DTI data and FDA-approved software to provide 3D color tractograms that illustrate where the brain has suffered white matter injury that causes water to leak from neural tracts, which has been associated with impairment.
To better understand the complexity behind a traumatic brain injury, we ask patients to complete a thorough registration and intake process where patients describe their injury and symptoms.
Followed by the intake and registration process, a full neurological evaluation is performed by board-certified neurosurgeon and the inventor of DTI (U.S. Patent – 5,560,360), Dr. Aaron Filler. As a treating physician, Dr Filler has served as a medical expert to confirm TBI diagnoses.
There may be 60-70 particular injury locations in the brain which correspond to distinct clinical symptoms. Dr. Filler’s proprietary DTI protocol includes detailed analysis methods that can include correlating the onset of symptoms with the objective DTI image findings. Our DTI process also includes other imaging sequences including SWI, routine brain MRI, T1, T2, mean diffusivity, FLAIR, that can help elucidate previous brain injury, if any, or other brain abnormalities.
Treatment of TBI
We believe in non-invasive technology that offers targeted and effective therapeutics personalized to each patient’s TBI symptoms.
We offer the first available DTI-neuronavigated transcranial magnetic stimulation (nTMS) with specific protocols tailored to each patient. Most importantly, the target for therapy is guided by the results of the patient’s DTI scan which provide truly personalized protocols.
With neuronavigated transcranial magnetic stimulation (nTMS), a magnetic field is briefly generated in a handheld coil passes harmlessly and noninvasively down into the brain and creates a small electric field in the outer layer (cortex) of the brain. nTMS treatment is solidly grounded in scientific and clinical research and harnesses the brain’s own healing power- neuroplasticity.
Our SmartFocus® TMS technology uses the science of electricity to help the brain heal itself and every treatment is personalized to the patient’s own brain anatomy and alertness level. As a non-drug approach, nTMS only influences brain activity and does not alter body chemistry in other parts of the body.