Research project to improve early diagnosis and treatment of mild traumatic brain injuries

With financial backing from a leading nonprofit supporter of military medical research, medical device manufacturer Neuro Kinetics, Inc. (www.neuro-kinetics.com) said today that it is collaborating with the U.S. Army Aeromedical Research Laboratory (USAARL) at Fort Rucker, Alabama, and three other military medical facilities in a comprehensive research project to improve early diagnosis and treatment of mild traumatic brain injuries (mTBI).

The coordinated research focuses on using Neuro Kinetics' I-Portal® NOTC (Neuro-Otologic Test Center) system to evaluate and characterize vestibular, auditory and oculomotor conditions in soldiers suffering from hard-to-detect mTBI as a result of blast exposure. An estimated 20 percent of soldiers returning from Afghanistan and Iraq suffer from mTBI.

The other military medical facilities in the research project are Tripler Army Medical Center (Hawaii), The Traumatic Brain Injury Warrior Resilience and Recovery Center at Fort Campbell (Kentucky) and Walter Reed Army Medical Center (D.C.).

The military researchers' purchase of NKI's I-Portal NOTC system was supported in part by grants from the T.R.U.E. Research Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation that assists the military medical community.

The project is expected to run until July 2010.

"It is our honor to be working closely with military researchers on this critically important effort," said J. Howison Schroeder, NKI president and CEO. "Research suggests that the oculometric measurements included in the I-Portal NOTC's battery of tests can provide effective neuro-physiologic and vestibular-auditory evaluations for mTBI, and that in turn can improve early screening and treatment.

"Our wounded soldiers deserve the best care possible and we are proud to be playing our part to deliver exactly that."

The NKI-military collaboration comes as a number of U.S. military facilities have installed the I-Portal NOTC system to improve diagnosis and monitoring of returning brain-injured military personnel. Numerous other federal government medical facilities, including those operated by the Veterans Administration and the National Institutes of Health, also rely on NKI equipment for conducting daily clinical evaluations of patients as well as undertaking a wide range of research projects.