Physicians to test new emergency treatment for traumatic brain injuries

Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBIs) occur, sadly, much more frequently than you may think.  The effects are often permanent, life-threatening and/or significant in nature.  TBIs can negatively affect many vital parts of one’s daily living, as well as the people around them.  A recent article discusses a new emergency treatment that may help combat those effects.  This treatment is spear-headed by the Emergency Department of Stanford Hospital and Clinics, as well as the Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, and is more fully detailed below:  

The Stanford team and physicians at 16 other U.S. sites want to test the efficacy of a new drug treatment. In a phase-3 clinical trial that has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, patients with traumatic brain injuries would receive progesterone, a hormone normally found in our bodies, to determine if it helps lessen brain swelling and damage.

Animal studies and two small clinical studies have indicated that progesterone may be beneficial in treating TBI patients. Quinn, who is an associate professor of emergency medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine, also noted that progesterone “has been around a long time, and it’s a substance we know a lot about” because it has been used for birth control and for hormone therapy.

In the trial, TBI patients who are brought to Stanford, Santa Clara Valley Medical Center and the other participating medical centers would be separated randomly into two groups. One group would get an IV mixture that has progesterone, and the other group would get an IV drip without progesterone. Everyone enrolled in the study would receive standard medical care for a brain injury — maintaining blood pressure and providing oxygen — and all patients would be contacted by telephone every month for five months, to check on their progress before returning at six months for final neurological testing.

The proposed trial is unusual because the IV treatment would have to begin within four hours of the onset of an injury — at a time when most TBI patients aren’t alert enough to give consent, and their families can’t get to the emergency department fast enough to give consent. “The people we see in the ED often come in unconscious, and we know from experience that finding family members to give consent for treatment in the emergency setting can be difficult,” Quinn said.

The consent controversy is one that will most likely not go away anytime soon.  The article states that there are federal laws in place, that allow such procedures to occur, without the patient’s informed consent.  With this in mind, Stanford has posted a link for interested individuals to take a survey, in regard to their feelings regarding such a procedure.

We leave you with some somber statistics:

Every 15 seconds, someone in the United States suffers a major traumatic brain injury. Every five minutes, someone is forever disabled as a result of a TBI. Some 52,000 deaths per year are caused by these injuries. TBIs are the leading cause of death in people aged 1 to 44.

Let’s hope these numbers decrease as time goes on, with advances in safe medical technology and innovation.