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Web program focuses on injuries from falls

How the public-health community is responding to falls among elderly people is the subject of a Webcast titled "Help older adults live better, longer: Prevent falls and traumatic brain injuries."

The one-hour program will air at 2 p.m. today and will be archived on the Web site www.publichealthgrandrounds.unc.edu. The program is free, but online registration is requested.

The program is a collaboration between the School of Public Health at UNC-Chapel Hill and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Grants to help standardize care for brain injuries

At age 4, Sarah Jane Donohue's brain is so damaged she cannot speak or crawl. The girl's plight and her father's activism are catapulting doctors and hospitals across the nation to figure out how best to serve children with brain damage.

As a result, a doctor at UNC-Chapel Hill will develop a plan to standardize the care that adolescents receive after their brains are compromised in accidents or by abuse or disease. Around the country, grants will enable a researcher in every state to map out similar plans.

"Every single time this happens to a family, we're stuck reinventing the wheel," said Patrick Donohue, Sarah Jane's father and the impetus behind the national program being rolled out this week. "One day, families won't have to go through that."

What panelists discovered

A commission -- led by former Sen. Bob Dole, R-Kan., a wounded World War II veteran, and Donna Shalala, president of the University of Miami and a former secretary of Health and Human Services -- studied the care system for wounded military personnel.

It reported problems in:

Coordinating care and patient information by the Defense and Veterans Affairs departments, whose procedures often leave veterans in limbo between the two agencies. Reconciling the differing Defense and Veterans Affairs standards for evaluating veterans' disabilities. Treating post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury, common among those deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, because of a lack of staff specialists. Supporting family members of wounded soldiers, even as relatives are uprooting themselves for months at a time to help loved ones recover.

Snowboarder Kevin Pearce moved to Denver hospital

Snowboarder Kevin Pearce has been transferred to a Denver hospital specializing in brain injuries.

Pearce banged his head on the halfpipe during practice Dec. 31 and was taken to University of Utah hospital.

An update Thursday says Pearce is making "excellent strides" since the accident left him in critical condition. He has been moved to Craig Hospital - considered to have one of the top rehab facilities for people with traumatic brain injuries.

Infants' brain bleeding might not mean abuse

Minor brain hemorrhages occur in as many as one in four otherwise healthy newborns -- a finding that surprised researchers at UNC-Chapel Hill and could help physicians avoid wrongly accusing parents and caregivers of child abuse.

The researchers, whose findings appear in the February issue of the journal Radiology, note that bleeding in an infant's brain is commonly associated with "shaken baby syndrome," a traumatic brain injury that occurs when an infant is violently shaken. Intracranial bleeding, which can cause serious brain damage or even death, is a hallmark characteristics of a shaken baby.

That's why physicians at UNC-CH were taken aback at results they collected during a radiology study looking into early brain development. Scan after scan of infants turned up brain bleeds. Twenty-six percent of babies delivered vaginally scanned with supersensitive magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, showed evidence of such bleeding. Previous studies have found brain bleeds at significantly lower rates. Bleeding