Archive for June 20th, 2009

The University of Miami Medical School is part of a new national consortium of 52 top medical institutions being created to study and treat what it calls the leading cause of death and disability in children — brain injury.

The medical schools and hospitals are joining forces with a New York lawyer/lobbyist whose daughter suffered a brain injury when shaken by a nurse to raise $125 million or more for the consortium. Its goal: national coordination of the prevention, treatment, rehabilitation and further study of pediatric brain injuries.

”This is huge,” said Gillian Hotz, co-director of the Pediatric Brain & Spinal Cord Injury Program at the UM med school. “All of us in trauma centers around the country have been sitting in our little silos all these years. This is a chance to have a national program get more resources, more programs for children with catastrophic injuries.”

The new group is called the National Pediatric Acquired Brain Injury Plan. Its goal: to spend $125 million a year to address seven categories of care of brain injury — prevention, acute care, rehabilitation, adult transition, rural/telehealth, mild traumatic brain injury and a virtual center.

The Sarah Jane Brain Project was created in 2007 by New York lobbyist/lawyer Patrick Donohue after his infant daughter, Sarah Jane, was shaken by a nurse, causing a severe brain injury. The new initiative was announced Friday on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., Sara Jane’s fourth birthday. She cannot walk, talk, crawl or sit up.

5,000 DEATHS A YEAR

Pediatric traumatic brain injury is the leading cause of death and disability for children and young adults from birth to 25 years of age, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

It causes 5,000 deaths a year. It includes all traumatic causes plus brain injuries from tumors, strokes, meningitis, insufficient oxygen, poisoning, ischemia and substance abuse.

Since the brain is not fully developed until age 26, many brain injuries to service personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan are considered pediatric cases, Hotz said.

The project will attempt to set up ”centers of excellence” to develop plans to standardize acute care, hospital treatment and rehabilitation for brain injuries based on future studies.

Robert Kornfeld has 25 + years of experience in handling spinal and traumatic brain injury cases which can be caused by another’s medical negligence,or by motor vehicle accidents involving pedestrians, cars, bicycles. motorcycles and trucks, or in on the job settings, such as, maritime, fishing and construction. Traumatic spinal and traumatic brain damage injuries can occur at any time as result of the negligence of another.

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