Thursday 11 August 2022 12:04 AM Blood test taken within 24 hours of head injury can predict whether a person ... trends now
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A breakthrough new blood test can quickly tell physicians a patients risk of dying or suffering severe complications from a head injury - and as a result allow them to act faster in certain high risk cases to save a life they may not have otherwise.
A joint research team from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), University of Pennsylvania and University of Michigan found that they could test for two specific biomarkers that indicate a person's risk of severe disability or death from a head injury in only minutes using portable blood analyzers.
In doing so, doctors can get a snapshot of how serious a case they are dealing with. This allows to to act faster when providing more significant medical treatment - which doctors can be late on if they do not realize the true extent of a person's injury at first.
These findings could be extremely valuable, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that traumatic brain injury (TBI) is one of the leading causes of death and disability among America's youth. In total, 50,000 Americans die from a TBI each year, and nearly 100,000 suffer long-term disability.
Researchers have found that a simple blood test searching for two proteins can determine a