Sports Injuries

Brainscope is a new and highly advanced medical device that’s relatively cheap to buy and easy to use, and El Paso’s UMC is just one of two hospitals in the nation that has one.
Actually, University Medical Center has two of them. But it shouldn’t be too long before they’re in emergency rooms, neighborhood ER centers, ambulances, professional sports medical facilities and military medical units.
That’s because the hand-held Brainscope One, its formal name, doesn’t just detect brain injuries, it can diagnose them on the spot in minutes.

“This is not quite Dr. McCoy’s tricorder, but we’re getting close,” said Dr. Edward Michelson, the medical director of UMC’s emergency medicine department, referring to the sci-fi device used on the Star Trek Enterprise.
Nationally, more than 150 people die every day from traumatic brain injuries, or TBI, and 3 million people a year are treated for head injuries in hospital emergency rooms, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.
Emergency room visits for head injuries have increased sharply in recent years as the public has become more aware of the risks of concussions and traumatic brain injuries, or TBI, resulting from sports activities and accidents.
“This is great to have at a time when you have a greater awareness of concussions related to football, car accidents, whatever it is,” said UMC spokesperson, Ryan Mielke. “Equipment like this reduces the expense and the anxiety for the patient.
“You can’t put a price on that.”
The diagnostic tools of choice today for detecting brain injuries are the EEG and the CAT scan, also known as the CT scan, both of which can require time, hospitalization and high-level expertise to use.
They’re also expensive to buy – an EEG reader can go for as little as $9,000, but CAT scan equipment ranges up to $3 million.
The Brainscope – which could be called a smart, hand-held EEG device – will sell for around $5,000 and may cost patients and insurers as little as $200 per use, Michelson said.
The new device won’t replace the EEG or CAT scan, but it can tell doctors and techs whether those exams should be conducted and, just as importantly, whether further testing is necessary at all, Michelson said.
The business end of the Brainscope is a hand-held computer that’s smaller than most smartphones.
“The computer is really a ruggedized cellphone,” Michaelson said, describing the military version of the computer with its protective case.
The computer connects to a rubbery amplifier that fits on top of the head and hooks to a disposable headset with nine electrode sensors that attach at key points on the forehead and face.
Not unlike a radio, the electrodes pick up energy waves emitted by different areas of the brain, send them to the amplifier, which boosts the signals and sends them to the computer.
Within five minutes of being fitted, the Brainscope can diagnose a head injury and, with 97 percent accuracy, tell a doctor whether to order further tests or treatment.
“Think about this, say you’re hit in the head and instead of coming to an ER, which is a trauma center with neurosurgeons, you go to the urgent care down the road,” Michelson said. “They don’t have a CT scanner or a neurosurgeon, but they’re a little worried about you.
“In the past, they would send you to me at the ER, and now you’ve got a second bill for a CAT scan. But, the urgent care center can put this on you and say, based on the Brainscope, you need to go to the ER or you can go home.”
Michelson is a professor and the chair of the Paul L. Foster School of Medicine’s Department of Emergency Medicine. He held the same position at Case Western School of Medicine in Cleveland before being recruited to UMC 16 months ago