Social Catalyst

I was reading an article on brain injuries and was surprised at the statistics that I found. The leading cause of death in people from 1 to 44 is a brain injury. I was also surprised to learn 52,000 people die each year from a brain injury! That number is staggering for me. I realize brain injuries can happen any where but that is still a large number. Currently 2% of the United States population live with a disability from a brain injury. That number translates to 5.3 million people. A brain injury of moderate to severe has been associated with 2.3 and 4.5 times of increasing the risk of Alzheimer’s disease. An estimated 1.5 million head injuries happen in the US every year. It is estimated that 1.6 to 3.8 million sports injuries are related to a brain injury each year. Males are twice as likely to receive a brain injury then a female. These numbers were so eye opening for me. This is something that effects so many people. In many cases it is the family that is left dealing with a difficult situation. This can be a very difficult time for everyone involved. These numbers just remind me of how truly delicate we humans are and how tough we sometimes have to be.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 at 11:29 am and is filed under Ramblings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.