Treatment of Grammatical Time Marking in Post-Stroke Aphasia
Brain InjuryVascular2 moreThe study aims to assess a individual or group therapy's effectiveness in grammatical time marking. The main objective is to examine whether the therapy improves grammatical time marking of inflected verbs treated on the sessions. We also explore whether the observed progress can be transferred to untrained items, more ecological contexts and if is maintained two and four weeks after the end of treatment. This therapy will be administered to nine individuals with brain lesions after stroke. Five individuals will take part of the individual therapy and four individuals will take part of the group therapy (two individuals per group). The therapy will last one month, at the rate of three weekly sessions of approximately one hour.
Humacyte Human Acellular Vessel (HAV) in Patients With Vascular Trauma
TraumaVascular System InjuryThis study evaluates the use of the Human Acellular Vessel (HAV) in adults with vascular trauma below the neck who are undergoing vascular reconstructive surgery. There will be a torso cohort and a limb cohort. All subjects will be implanted with a HAV as an interposition vessel or bypass using standard vascular surgical techniques. There is no control arm.
Multimodal Monitoring of Cerebral Autoregulation After Pediatric Brain Injury
Traumatic Brain InjuryBrain Injuries2 moreVarious methods have been studied to evaluate autoregulation. However, there is currently no universally accepted technique to assess integrity of the cerebral autoregulation neurovascular system. In the last decade, significant progress has been achieved in developing methods to assess cerebral autoregulation by quantifying cross-correlation between spontaneous oscillations in CBF or oxygenation and similar oscillations in arterial blood pressure. In this study the investigators will analyze the relationship between spontaneous fluctuations in mean arterial blood pressure and cerebral blood flow velocity or cerebral regional oxygenation to investigate two novel methods for measuring cerebral autoregulation, Transfer Function Analysis and Wavelet Coherence after acute pediatric brain injury.
Development and Validation of a Structured Tele-rehabilitation Programme of Brain Injured Patients...
Brain InjuryVascular2 moreThe goal of this research project is to develop a tele-rehabilitation programme, which will constitute an original care pathway for brain damaged patients. It will aim to improve their impairments, activities and social participation. The programme will deliver a therapeutic education and self-education programme targeting the upper and lower limbs, and will assess the patients by means of a diary and self-evaluation questionnaires.
Vascular Injury in Mechanical Ventilation: a Proof-of-Concept Study
Mechanical Ventilation ComplicationVascular Injury1 moreInvestigation of the effect of mechanical ventilation on biomarkers of microvascular damage
Developing a Decision Instrument to Guide Abdominal-pelvic CT Imaging of Blunt Trauma Patients
Abdominal InjuryPelvic Fracture12 moreUnrecognized abdominal and pelvic injuries can result in catastrophic disability and death. Sporadic reports of "occult" injuries have generated concern, and physicians, fearing that they may miss such an injury, have adopted the practice of obtaining computed tomography on virtually all patients with significant blunt trauma. This practice exposes large numbers patients to dangerous radiation at considerable expense, while detecting injuries in a small minority of cases. Existing data suggest that a limited number of criteria can reliably identify blunt injury victims who have "no risk" of abdominal or pelvic injuries, and hence no need for computed tomography (CT), without misidentifying any injured patient. It is estimated that nationwide implementation of such criteria could result in an annual reduction in radiographic charges of $75 million, and a significant decrease in radiation exposure and radiation induced malignancies. This study seeks to determine whether "low risk" criteria can reliably identify patients who have sustained significant abdominal or pelvic injuries and safely decrease CT imaging of blunt trauma patients. This goal will be accomplished in the following manner: All blunt trauma victims undergoing computed tomography of the abdomen/pelvis in the emergency department will undergo routine clinical evaluations prior to radiographic imaging. Based on these examinations, the presence or absence of specific clinical findings (i.e. abdominal/pelvic/flank pain, abdominal/pelvic/flank tenderness, bruising abrasions, distention, hip pain, hematuria, hypotension, tachycardia, low or falling hematocrit, intoxication, altered sensorium, distracting injury, positive FAST imaging, dangerous mechanism, abnormal x-ray imaging) will be recorded for each patient, as will the presence or absence of abdominal or pelvic injuries. The clinical findings will serve as potential imaging criteria. At the completion of the derivation portion of the study the criteria will be examined to find a subset that predicts injury with high sensitivity, while simultaneously excluding injury, and hence the need for imaging, in the remaining patients. These criteria will then be confirmed in a separate validation phase of the study. The criteria will be considered to be reliable if the lower statistical confidence limit for the measured sensitivity exceeds 98.0%. Potential reductions in CT imaging will be estimated by determining the proportion of "low-risk" patients that do not have significant abdominal or pelvic injuries.
Early Detection of Vaping-related Vascular Diseases
VapingBlood Vessel InjuryThe purpose of this study is to determine how vaping affects blood vessels, in particular if early damage occurs in the lung vessels.
Registry for Vascular Trauma and Follow-up Examinations
Vascular InjuryWithin the framework of the project presented here, a registry for traumatic vascular injuries will be established at Augsburg University Hospital. Patients who are treated at our hospital for an isolated vascular trauma or a vascular involvement in (poly-)trauma will be included. This is a rare complication of trauma, so data collection in a registry is useful to pool data on therapeutic procedures and outcome. These patients differ from the usual vascular surgery patient clientele because there is usually no previous vascular disease. Healthy vessels show different physiological responses than pre-diseased vessels. The usual therapeutic procedures and materials are also developed for arteriosclerotic or aneurysmatic vessels. Therefore, a core objective of this study is to assess long-term outcomes after vascular trauma.
Sildenafil Treatment for Mild TBI
Vascular System InjuriesConcussion2 moreAbout 300,000 people are hospitalized for traumatic brain injury (TBI) each year. After TBI, secondary brain injury escalates due in part to heightened levels of oxidant injury, inflammation, and vascular injury. Traumatic cerebral vascular injury (TCVI) may begin almost immediately after the primary injury and evolve into chronic neurodegenerative conditions. TCVI is a very complex TBI endophenotype and microvascular injuries have been described in a plethora of animal and human TBI studies. These injuries consist of endothelial injury, disruption of the blood brain barrier (BBB), a reduction of capillary density, intravascular microthrombi, and white-matter degeneration. Recently, use of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-Blood Oxygen Level Dependent (BOLD) combined with hypercapnia (high spatial and temporal resolution) by our research group has proven to be more sensitive at measuring alterations of cerebral blood flow (CBF) in TBI subjects. The goal of the proposed research is to test the efficacy of Viagra® (sildenafil) at normalizing CBF and improving cognitive outcomes in people that have experienced a TBI. Sildenafil is a phosphodiesterase-5 (PDE-5) inhibitor that has previously been administered as a therapy for high blood pressure and erectile dysfunction. In people that have been affected by stroke-induce neurotrauma, sildenafil improved CBF and was found to be neuroprotective. With respect to chronic TBI, previous studies have demonstrated that sildenafil therapy potentiates cardiovascular reactivity (CVR) in areas of the brain with damaged endothelium. In this proposal, the investigators will test the hypothesis that sildenafil treatment in boxers/Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) fighters soon after concussion normalizes CBF, potentiates CVR, reduces post-concussion symptoms, and improves cognition.
The Effectiveness of Core Stability Exercises
Brain InjuryVascular5 moreThis study assess the effectiveness of core stability exercises performed in subacute phase of stroke. Half of participants will receive conventional physiotherapy, while the other half will receive core stability exercises and core stability exercises plus transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS).