US Department of Defense
BLAST INJURY RESEARCH
COORDINATING OFFICE
Advancing Blast Injury Research to Protect and Heal Those Who Serve
For over five years, the DoD Blast Injury Research Coordinating Office (BIRCO) has participated in the annual Military Health System Research Symposium (MHSRS) as part of the mission to identify blast injury knowledge gaps, shape medical research programs to fill identified gaps, facilitate collaboration among diverse communities within and outside of the DoD, and widely disseminate blast injury research information.
This year, BIRCO co-sponsored with the DoD/VA Vision Center of Excellence an opening breakout session for the symposium titled, "Ocular Injuries Caused by Exposure to Blast Overpressure." In this session moderated by BIRCO's, Dr. Daniel Bryden, researchers discussed the causes of military eye injuries throughout modern history, strategies to mitigate eye injury after blast exposure, injury prediction through computational modeling, and heterogeneity in ocular trauma research methodologies.
COL (Ret) Robert Mazzoli, MD, describes the types of blast-related injuries observed during the past two decades of war
The second session, moderated by BIRCO director Mr. Michael Leggieri, featured the latest research on "Approaches for Monitoring Warfighter Blast-Related Exposures in Training to Develop Effective Safety Standards." The session opened with an inspiring presentation on the health outcomes experienced by MH-60 Direct Action Penetrator crew members as a result of blast overpressure exposure and the injury mitigation strategies used to reduce these effects. Researchers also discussed environmental, neurocognitive, imaging, and molecular biomarkers for monitoring blast-related exposure; the use of hydrogels as brain surrogates in blast research; and using historical blast injury research data for modern research purposes.
Mr. Michael Leggieri moderates the MHSRS session on monitoring blast-related exposures
In addition to these two well attended sessions, 37 posters were also presented during poster sessions on the topics associated with these facilitated breakout discussions.
BIRCO thanks all presenters and attendees and looks forward to participating at MHSRS 2020!
The PCO hosted the sixth SoS meeting, Minimizing the Impact of Wound Infections Following Blast-Related Injuries in Arlington, Virginia on November 29 – December 1, 2016. During the meeting, approximately 95 military, government, industry, academic, and international subject matter experts shared their expertise on wound infection and worked to identify knowledge gaps and develop recommendations for closing the gaps.
Victims of explosions often suffer from multiple traumatic injuries; the mechanism, severity, and complexity of these injuries contribute to the risk for wound infection. Additionally, multi-drug resistance is growing worldwide, with very few new or next generation anti-infective drugs in development. As a result, effective prevention, mitigation and treatment strategies for wound infections remain a critical need for military and civilian populations. The 2016 SoS meeting provided a forum to identify what is known and unknown about wound infections following blast-related injuries, and to develop recommendations that can advance the science and deliver needed solutions to Service Members.
The agenda for the 2016 SoS meeting included a keynote presentation followed by topic speakers who framed the problem of wound infection from policy and scientific perspectives. Scientific presentations and poster sessions provided a forum for information exchange and lessons learned. Working groups, chaired by invited Expert Panel members, addressed key questions about the prevention, mitigation, and treatment of wound infection.
The comprehensive findings and recommendations from the 2016 SoS meeting are being synthesized and recorded in a proceedings report that will be distributed to key stakeholders and made publicly available on this website in the Spring of 2017.
For more information on identifying blast injury knowledge gaps, read more...
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