Traumatic Brain Injury in the War Zone

To the Editor: In Okie's Perspective article (May 19 issue) 1 on traumatic brain injury (TBI) from the war in Iraq, she alludes to mood disorders that result from such injuries. Patients with TBI have been described as the “walking wounded” 2 owing to their lingering neuropsychological problems. Lishman studied 670 cases of head injuries from the Second World War and reported that “simple measures of the amount of brain damage . . . were indeed related to the amount of psychiatric disability encountered one to five years later.” 3 As many as 77 percent of patients with TBI have been given a . . .