Overview
The Neurology Traumatic Brain Injury & Concussion (NTBIC) Program is a rapidly growing multi specialty collaborative clinical -research program encompassing an inpatient and clinic service. The novel program recognizes the diverse recoveries and experiences of TBI patients. Dr. Chen is a neurologist, neurointensivist, and founding director of the NTBIC program. The research program leverages a growing prospective rich clinical database.
Core questions our team is asking:
What explains the differing recoveries in concussion / TBI?
How does TBI affect the body long term?
Research Themes
1) Phenotypes and outcomes of TBI from clinical data
2) Invasive & non-invasive ICU multimodal monitoring trends in moderate-severe TBI
3) Predictors of disability and phenotypes in concussion and post-concussive syndrome
4) Rapid cognitive testing methods in acute & subacute TBI
5) TBI and long-term chronic disease risk
Why this is important
Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) is a leading cause of hospital admissions and disability in the US with an expected increase with the aging population. This represents a growing public health problem.
TBI is increasingly recognized as a chronic disease , and patient and families carry the burden of the disease. It is important to better understand the differences in TBI trajectory and experience at an individual level.
By understanding the nuanced differences in TBI patient recoveries we can translationally improve:
- long-term screening protocols
- new individualized diagnostics
- therapeutics
An Ongoing Collaboration
Our work represents an exciting collaboration with the following.
UCI Departments (“NTBIC Consortium”)
- Trauma Surgery
- Neurosurgery
- Neurocritical Care
- ENT/Neuro-otology
- Neuro-opthamology
- Neurology: Movement Disorders, Headache, Epilepsy, Neuropsychology,
- Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation
UCLA
Harvard Medical School
An Invitation
We invite students interested in longitudinal clinical based projects who hope to be highly productive and gain clinical statistical skills that will benefit them in post-graduate training. Research and clinical opportunities are tailored to student interest and projects can blend with other subspecialties (eg. stroke, headache, trauma ICU, neurosurgery). Projects are geared toward data analysis, fundamentals of medical- biostatistics, emerging machine learning topics.
We hope to continue to expand collaboration across multiple- specialties and interests to improve the lives of TBI patients and invite inquiries.