[chechokancho]

I know, I know. Some of you have convinced yourselves that NPR is some sort of bastion of liberal reporting. However, reality shows that they provide some excellent in-depth coverage of a variety of issues in a balanced manner.

This week they are doing a report on the impact of traumatic brain injury (TBI) in our troops, and the potential that 10s of thousands of our men and women in uniform are suffering symptoms without correct diagnoses.

Military Still Failing To Diagnose, Treat Brain Injuries : NPR

Among the findings:

From the battlefield to the homefront, the military’s doctors and screening systems routinely miss brain trauma in soldiers. One of the military tests fails to catch as many as 40 percent of concussions, a recent unpublished study concluded. A second exam, on which the Pentagon has spent millions, yields results that top medical officials call about as reliable as a coin flip.
Even when military doctors diagnose head injuries, that information often doesn't make it into soldiers' permanent medical files. Handheld medical devices designed to transmit data have failed in the austere terrain of the war zones. Paper records from Iraq and Afghanistan have been lost, burned or abandoned in warehouses, officials say, when no one knew where to ship them.
Without diagnosis and official documentation, soldiers with head wounds have had to battle for appropriate treatment. Some received psychotropic drugs instead of rehabilitative therapy that could help retrain their brains. Others say they have received no treatment at all, or have been branded as malingerers. Now whether you are a staunch conservative or a flaming liberal, it should be pretty easy for us all to agree that our men and women in uniform deserve to receive the best care possible. This is clearly not it.