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While often considered a low incidence disability, traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) among students are anything but low incidence occurrences. Furthermore, educators are often at times not made aware that a student is injured; when informed, the information provided is generally limited or incomplete at best leaving educators unsure regarding what is needed for the student. In this chapter, information on TBI and its effects on students is provided. We also explore the history of inclusion, mechanisms for service delivery, accommodations and modifications for injured students, and transitioning and reintegrating students post-injury. Lastly, we provide a review of common barriers to service delivery and offer both proactive and reactive strategies to overcome those barriers.

Hospital emergency rooms document approximately 500,000 traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) in children and adolescents aged 0–14 annually; these prevalence rates do not include those learners evaluated in primary care facilities nor those never evaluated by medical professionals. In this chapter, information on TBI and its effect on learners is provided with emphasis on the idiosyncratic nature of the injury and, thus, the need for individualized reintegration and educational plans. The role of educators in the identification, assessment, reintegration, disability classification, intervention delivery, and progress monitoring is described. Lastly, specific intervention options are presented with cautions that interventions should not be simply picked from a menu, but rather targeting key observations and reported deficits in the physical, cognitive, emotional, social, and behavioral domains.

This chapter provides an overview on the traditions and values of teaching students with traumatic brain injury (TBI). First, we discuss the prevalence, identification, and characteristics associated with TBI and how those characteristics affect learning, behavior, and daily life functioning. Next, we focus on instructional and behavioral interventions used in maintaining the traditions in classrooms for working with students with TBI. Findings from a review of the literature conclude that there are no specific academic curriculums designed specifically for teaching students with TBI; however, direct instruction and strategy instruction have been shown to be effective educational interventions. Current research on students with TBI is predominately being conducted in medical centers and clinics focusing on area of impairments (e.g., memory, attention, processing speed) rather than academic achievement and classroom interventions. Finally, we conclude with a list of accommodations and a discussion of recommendations for future work in teaching students with TBI.

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) can significantly affect academic performance in a wide range of areas including, working memory, language processing, attention, and internalizing and externalizing behaviors. This chapter will discuss characteristics associated with TBI, and provide a series of high- and low-tech strategies teachers can implement in their classrooms to help students who have experienced brain trauma to succeed through academic challenges. In addition, the benefits and weaknesses of certain technologies used by students with TBI in school and at home will be discussed.

Traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) are a significant public health problem that affect an estimated 1.7 million US residents yearly. TBI patients experience a variety of symptoms related to physical functioning, sensory processing, cognition, communication, behavior, and mental health, all of which differ in severity by individual. Recent evidence suggests that hypothalamic pituitary dysfunction may be impacting recovery. The purpose of this paper is to increase awareness about the frequency of hypothalamic pituitary dysfunction following a TBI and its effect on functional recovery.

The paper reviews the literature regarding hypothalamic pituitary dysfunction following TBI and discusses the potential benefits of hormone replacement therapy for individuals with hormone deficiencies.

The rate of hypothalamic pituitary dysfunction following TBI has been reported as anywhere between 25 and 80 percent. Specifically, abnormal hormone levels, both chronic and acute, are generally estimated to be approximately 5-22 percent for thyroid hormones, 15-33 percent for growth hormone (GH), and 25-80 percent for testosterone. The effect of hypopituitarism has been reported on several aspects cognitive and physical function as well as overall quality of life. In these studies, GH and testosterone deficiencies appear to underlie the observed impairments.

The paper suggests the importance of understanding and screening for hypothalamic pituitary dysfunction as hormone replacement therapy may be a beneficial intervention to promote physical and cognitive rehabilitation.

The purpose of this paper is to describe level of education and return to school and employment among children and young adults who sustained a Traumatic brain injury (TBI) 15 years ago and to analyse the occurrence of any medical disability.

The study is descriptive. The authors used a questionnaire with questions covering education, employment, sick leave, insurance compensation and medical follow-up.

A total of 37 individuals, 17 (45.9 per cent) women and 20 (54.1 per cent) men, participated. Just over half (20 individuals, 54.1 per cent) were in employment, five (13.5 per cent) were unemployed and four (10.8 per cent) received disability pension. In total, 18 (48.6 per cent) individuals had received full compensation from their insurance companies, while 12 (35.3 per cent) had had their medical disability classified. A total of 12 (33.3 per cent) individuals were taking medication and five (13.9 per cent) had been followed by the health care system. The results indicate that people sustaining a TBI are less successful on the labour market than the general population, that relatively few had had their disability classified and that almost 50 per cent receive no insurance compensation.

There are few long-term follow-up studies on brain injuries acquired during childhood, and this study would add to the previous knowledge, as aspects of medical disability and legal compensation are included.

The purposes of this study were to: (a) measure and compare the subjective health status of persons with spinal cord injuries (SCIs); traumatic brain injuries (TBIs), burns, and intra-articular fractures of the lower extremities (IAFx); (b) identify factors that explain variation in the health assessments of persons with each injury type; and (c) determine whether the effects of study factors and variables are consistent across injury types. These tasks were accomplished by employing the Sickness Impact Profile (SIP), a generic, overall health status indicator, as the outcome measure in three separate sets of hierarchical regression analyses. The variable subsets useful in explaining overall SIP scores for the four injury types were defined and questions concerning similarities among the different injury types were addressed. Findings indicate that: (a) the overall, physical, and psychosocial health assessments of persons with TBIs, IAFx, and burns do not differ significantly; and (b) persons with SCIs, TBIs, IAFx, and burns should be considered distinct groupings with respect to the individual determinants of overall health status and the variable domains explaining the greatest amounts of variance in health status assessments.

The purpose of this paper is to review safeguarding adult reviews (SARs) pertaining to individuals with acquired brain injury (ABI) since 2014. This extended literature review also explores the lessons and recommendations from these reviews in relation to social work practice within the UK.

The literature review reported and discussed findings across reviews and then used a thematic analysis to synthesise the findings and recommendations from the SARs reviews.

This paper identified four main themes: a lack of awareness of the needs of those with ABI and their families and around the symptoms and nuances of brain injury, particularly executive impairment and mental capacity, among social workers; poor interdisciplinarity led to a lack of shared communication and decision-making with professionals with such knowledge; a poor understanding of aspects of the mental capacity legislation, particularly surrounding unwise decisions, led to inappropriate or absent mental capacity assessments; and a lack of professional curiosity led to a lack of action where intervention or assessment was required.

This review identifies significant shortcomings in social work practice, education and training within the UK with regards to ABI.

This paper provides recommendations to current social work practice and highlights the need for significant improvements in pre-qualification and post-qualification training and supervision of social workers.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, while there have been extensive reviews conducted on SARs, this is the only review that has focused solely on ABI.

Struck-by accidents (i.e. being hit by a falling object) are a leading cause of traumatic brain injuries in the construction industry. Despite the critical role of hard hats in minimizing such injuries, their overall design has not appreciably changed in decades. Therefore, this study aims to explore the potential benefits of modifying commercially available hard hat designs by incorporating a compliant cantilever and a sacrificial, energy-absorbing structure to enhance their protective capabilities against impacts.

This study involved conducting experimental impact tests to obtain the head acceleration attenuation using hard hats with a variety of compliant cantilever lattice insert designs. These lattice inserts were additively manufactured using three polymeric materials, including polylactide (PLA), acrylonitrile butadiene styrene, high-impact polystyrene and three porosity levels. A Hybrid III head/neck assembly was fitted with each hard hat design, and experimental drop tests were conducted using a 1.8-kg steel impactor dropped from 1.83 m. The maximum acceleration and head injury criterion (HIC) values were obtained for each test.

Analysis of variance revealed that HIC was significantly reduced for all lattices with 56% porosity (p < 0.023) compared to the control (unmodified) hard hat. The most effective insert was found to be a PLA insert with 56% porosity, which reduced the HIC value by 38% compared to the control (unmodified) hard hat, with a statistically significant p-value of 0.018.

The data present in this study reveals that simple and inexpensive modifications can be made to existing hard hat designs to reduce injury risk from overhead impacts.