Establish standards of care for traumatic brain injury treatment

Progress, but not yet a standard of care

Updated: Wednesday, January 13th, 2010 | By Alex Holt

In his campaign, Barack Obama promised to "establish standards of care for TBI (traumatic brain injury) treatment, require pre- and post-deployment screenings and improve case management so that service members get the best possible care."

Since January 2008, a year before Obama became president, the newest version of the Post-Deployment Health Reassessment Program has included pre- and post-deployment screenings for Traumatic Brain Injury.

In April 2009, after President Obama took office, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Department of Defense issued a joint "clinical practice guideline" which "provide[s] evidence-based recommendations to assist providers and their patients in the decision-making process related to the patient health care problems." In it are recommendations for diagnosing and treating mild TBI, which often goes undiagnosed, and, even when diagnosed, is more difficult to treat.

Although evidence-based reccomendations are given, the guideline is very specific that it should not be used to "define a standard of care". But Obama was very clear that he wanted a standard of care. So for now, we'll just rate this one In the Works.

Sources:

VA/DOD, "Management of Concussion/mild Traumatic Brain Injury" April, 2009.

Deployment Health Clinical Center, "Post-Deployment Health Reassessment Program" Accessed Jan. 12, 2010