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COLUMBUS, Ohio – Medical specialists in Ohio and Indiana are joining forces to confront the many issues, both physical and psychological, faced by soldiers returning from war with traumatic injuries that require amputation of major limbs.
The high-tech protective gear and advanced field medicine techniques available to soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan have saved lives, but dozens of the surviving wounded have sustained limb amputations as a result of their injuries.
The U.S. Department of Defense already has granted $1 million to this effort, funding a project to study the rehabilitation needs of these severely wounded military personnel by seeding the establishment of the Indiana-Ohio Center for Traumatic Amputee Rehabilitation Research. The center will provide organizational oversight to an analysis of existing studies on patient and caregiver needs associated with treatment of traumatic amputation and preparation of a five-year plan for research and application of findings to the acute and long-term care of these patients.
Ohio State University medical researchers will be emphasizing the implications of traumatic brain injury for rehabilitation.
“To date, no standard guidelines exist for traumatic amputee care,” said Stephen Wilson, director of the School of Allied Medical Professions in Ohio State’s College of Medicine and Public Health. “That was the driving reason for the initial project. We’ve since found that many of these amputations result from blast injuries, and in about 60 percent of these cases, there is injury to the brain, as well.
“Knowing that, we wanted to draw on Ohio State’s strength in traumatic brain injury rehabilitation research in expanding upon this initiative,” said Wilson, principal investigator for Ohio State’s participation in the partnership.
Ohio State is home to the Ohio Valley Center for Brain Injury Prevention and Rehabilitation, a resource for patients and health care professionals throughout North America providing education and developing programs to improve the quality of life of persons who experience traumatic brain injury.
The initial Department of Defense funding supports development of a research agenda for establishing models of best rehabilitation practices for traumatic amputees. The goal of the research will be to optimize rehabilitation, independence and quality of life for veterans who suffer the loss of a limb in combat, said Mark Sothmann, dean of the Indiana University School of Health & Rehabilitation Sciences, the administrative home of the lead partner, the Indiana Center for Rehabilitation Sciences & Engineering Research.
The Indiana-Ohio center will provide national leadership on a research agenda to address these issues by bringing together experts representing medical management, prosthetic design, engineering needs, health services, rehabilitation and long-term health maintenance.
The first phase of the joint project will focus on research concerning health services available to traumatic amputees and an analysis of outcomes for mobility and quality of life for these soldiers in particular. The second phase of research will examine the most significant impairments, especially brain injury, associated with traumatic amputations and explore the best ways to provide optimum long-term care for these patients.
Part of the research will involve surveying selected soldiers with traumatic amputations to gain their insights on where gaps may exist in such areas as access to services and uniformity of care.
Upon completion of the analysis within 18 months, project organizers plan to begin competing for funding to implement the research program.
“Given the immediacy of the needs of our soldiers and the health care practitioners caring for them, this project can’t start too soon,” Wilson said. “And eventually, we expect to be able to apply research findings of this initiative to the civilian population, as well.”
Researchers and instructors in OSU’s School of Allied Medical Professions work collaboratively with their counterparts in a number of clinical and academic units, and most frequently with clinicians and researchers in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation.
The Indiana University School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences is one of a collaboration of seven schools in the Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis campus, the Roudebush Veterans Administration Medical Center and the Rehabilitation Hospital of Indiana.
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