There is a growing understanding within the neurosurgical community that blast injuries are different from those caused by penetrating or skull-fracture trauma. It is thought that shock waves damage the brain at a microscopic, sub-cellular level. That’s why surgeons who are quite capable of reconstructing the skull of a motorcycle crash victim -- something for which they have been well trained -- struggle to come up with treatment and rehabilitation techniques for the explosion-damaged brains of troops.
“TBIs from Iraq are different,” said P. Steven Macedo, a neurologist and former doctor at the Veterans Administration. Concussions from motorcycle accidents injure the brain by stretching or tearing it, he noted. But in Iraq, something else is going on. “When the sound wave moves through the brain, it seems to cause little gas bubbles to form,” he said. “When they pop, it leaves a cavity. So you are littering people’s brains with these little holes.”
