Snowboard Champ Returns to Slopes After Brain Injury

Olympic hopeful Kevin Pearce has 'long recovery' ahead

(NEWSER) - Doctors have upgraded Kevin Pearce’s condition from critical to serious and say the snowboarder is slowly regaining consciousness after a spill last week that left him with a traumatic brain injury. That’s “faster than anticipated,” one doctor says, but “he still has a long recovery ahead of him.” Pearce had been hoping to garner worldwide attention by pulling off a double cork at the Vancouver Olympics next month, notes the Boston Globe , which talked to him before his accident. More»

Amantadine hydrochloride shown to accelerate improvement

(NEWSER) - Good news for patients suffering from severe brain injuries: A drug used to treat Parkinson's disease could accelerate their recovery. The drug, amantadine hydrochloride, was tested against a placebo in a blind study of 184 patients. The group receiving the drug showed more improvement—not a lot more, but in a very short period of time—leading researchers to believe that the drug may be the first therapy able to be used as a standard to reliably help brain-injured patients. After the patients were taken off the drug, recovery slowed and the placebo group caught back up. More»

They go untreated in program plagued with problems: ProPublica, NPR

(NEWSER) - A military brain-injury testing program has cost $42 million thus far—but hardly any soldiers have benefited from the plan, according to a joint investigation by NPR and ProPublica . Their reports suggest the program has a been a huge waste of money that has fallen way short of its primary mission—diagnosing brain injuries among the troops. “We have failed soldiers,” says a retired colonel who used to run the program. “I can see firsthand the soldiers that we've missed, the soldiers that have not been treated, not been identified, misdiagnosed. And then they struggle.” More»

She is doing well after surgery to repair her skull

(AP) - Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords has woken up and is communicating after doctors placed an implant in her head to repair her skull yesterday, neurosurgeons said today in a news conference. The operation is another milestone in Giffords' recovery and will allow her to move around without the helmet she has worn since January when she began intensive rehabilitation in Houston. (Click to read more about the surgical procedure .) More»

The Arizona Republic offers a long look at her incredible progress

(NEWSER) - On Easter Sunday, some happy news from the Gabrielle Giffords camp: The Arizona congresswoman can stand and even walk a little, and though she is currently working on improving her gait, she told her nurse she plans to “walk a mountain” one day. More from the Arizona Republic ’s extensive update based on interviews from the past week:

• She speaks, although usually in very short phrases like “love you,” “awesome,” or—to doctors—“get out.” She has also been repeating “I miss Tucson.” When she does take the time to string together a longer sentence, searching her brain strenuously for the correct words, doctors say she speaks at a normal rate and clearly. Her chief of staff says Giffords “knows what she wants to say, and she knows everything that’s going on around her,” but can’t always express it.
• Her main doctor says Giffords is in the top 5% of patients recovering from this type of injury. Current therapy includes bowling and indoor golf; sometimes she even plays Scrabble with husband Mark Kelly. "Her left side is perfect," her chief of staff says. "She can do whatever you can do." Since Giffords was shot in the left side of her brain, she is working on rehabbing the right side of her body, meaning she’s left-handed now.