New Framework Advocates Lifelong Care for Traumatic Brain and Spinal Cord Injuries

A new chronic-care framework, published in The Lancet Neurology, proposes that traumatic brain injury (TBI) and spinal cord injury (SCI) should be treated as lifelong conditions requiring long-term monitoring and coordinated specialty care. This framework, co-authored by researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, highlights the long-term associations of these injuries with neurological, psychiatric, cardiovascular, endocrine, and metabolic diseases, calling for a fundamental shift in how even milder brain injuries are tracked and treated.