Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is clinically diverse and life changing. It occurs when an external force — a bump, blow, jolt or penetrating object — injures the brain. A TBI can result in a broad spectrum of symptoms and disabilities depending on the severity and complexity of the injury.
At UCI Health, our Neurology Traumatic Brain Injury & Concussion (NTBIC) program — the only one of its kind in Southern California — aims to provide accessible, integrated, solidified and long-term care to patients who have experienced a TBI.
Immediate consequences of a traumatic brain injury include a wide spectrum of symptomatology. Classically, this includes things like headaches, seizure as well as cognitive complaints. But more recently, we found that actually there's also an increased incidence and risk of sort of common disease conditions that are typically see more in the general general health populations, including high blood pressure, autonomic changes at the heart level, as well as increased risk for sort of hypercoagulable diseases like hyperlipidemia and cholesterol. And this is a very exciting field in the sense that we're still trying to understand why that risk factor might exist. So, my name is Patrick Chen. I am a neurologist by training uh with a subspecialty training in neuro critical care in a particular clinical research interest in traumatic brain injury and concussion. With regards to the long term risk of cardiovascular disease after traumatic brain injury across three different group populations, including sports populations, military populations, and more recently, general populations, which is largely my interest. We've shown that when you compare people who have hit their head historically to age sex, race controlled groups that haven't hit their head. For whatever reason, the population that hit their head has a significant increase in the risk factors of very common cardiovascular metabolic diseases, including hypertension diabetes, et cetera. If we can better understand this relationship, this is a large opportunity for sort of public health intervention at the brain injury level. Typical cases that we treat at UC include a wide sphere and spectrum of traumatic brain injury. This includes very severe traumatic brain injury that ends up in the intensive care unit, requiring advanced monitoring techniques and diagnosis and treatment. But also patients that are either discharged from the hospital with traumatic brain injury or concussion, as well as patients that continue to have symptoms of their initial concussion or traumatic brain injury in the clinic setting.
