MedPol: Traumatic Brain Injury: the signature wound of the Iraq War

Due to improved body armor and surgical techniques, the death toll in the Iraq war has been dramatically reduced from what might have been expected in past wars. Like most good news, this comes with an asterisk:

Known as traumatic brain injury, or TBI, the wound is of the sort that many soldiers in previous wars never lived long enough to suffer. The explosions often cause brain damage similar to "shaken-baby syndrome," says Warren Lux, a neurologist at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.

"You've got great body armor on, and you don't die," says Louis French, a neuropsychologist at Walter Reed. "But there's a whole other set of possible consequences. It's sort of like when they started putting airbags in cars and started seeing all these orthopedic injuries."

The wound may come to characterize this war, much the way illnesses from Agent Orange typified the Vietnam War, doctors say. "The numbers make it a serious problem," Lux says.