TBI=Traumatic Ballistic Injury?
I would have a lot of questions about using MRI exams for this kind of thing. An MRI is expensive, and open to interpretation. The VA system is already heavily burdened, and to add another 200,000 MRI exams a year is going to cost a lot of money, and the resources and manpower have to come from somewhere (It isn’t a zero sum game where we might say, “Hey, we already have these radiologists and MRI techs on the government hook, we might as well throw another 200,000 brain MRI exams onto their workload...” In a system as hard pressed to keep up, every recruit that gets an MRI is going to delay a Korean War vet who needs one) Also, if you do this for ONE person, you have to do it for EVERYONE. We might say, “Okay, we only do this for combat infantrymen.” Well, how about truck drivers? They might get hit by an IED too. How about sailors on a big ship? They might never see combat, but what if their ship is hit by a mine? How about an REMF who works in anonymity at some base that gets hit by a surprise Scud missile?
So, I would have a LOT of questions about this before I could answer it.
As for money for providers of care...
I am not in favor of more government cheese being handed out...EXCEPT in cases of supporting the military. I have always believed, coming from a military familty, that the stresses and strains of military life are unusual and unique, and that we should do all we can do to help. To help a wife, mother or father to care for her injured husband or their injured son? Yes. I would be willing to support some kind of help.
Okay...it must be Traumatic BRAIN injury. I have worked in medicine for years, but seeing an acronym out of context (for me) occasionally throws me.
When I was a student years ago, we were huddled around our teacher who had just performed a brain death study on a car accident victim. We were young, and this was the first exposure to this aspect of the job many of us had. There was a young man in the other room, around our age, normal, looking to us, but..unresponsive.
The tech came out, put the films up, and we looked at them. Our teacher looked at the films, and said something like “Looks like D.E.D. to me.”
We were all new and learning new acronyms with each day, but for the life of me, couldn’t figure out “DED”
Was it Di-Encephlatic Dysfunction? How about “Dendritic something or other...”
I was lost in thought, putting together various combinations embarrassed I didn’t know what it was, when one of my fellow students asked “What is D.E.D?”
The teacher said in a flat tone...”Dead”.
We were all horrified, but I look at it now, and it seems to me that was just one more mechanism people use to cope with things.
TBI
Traumatic Brain Injury
And expensive?
Indeed
BUT
I wonder if in the end it might actually save money by being able to prove or disprove a claim or injury