New database tracks Marine head injuries - Marine Corps News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Marine Corps Times

New database tracks Marine head injuries

The Marine Corps wants to make sure Marines and sailors who suffer concussions and other head injuries are tagged and tracked in a medical database, which officials hope will lead to better health care and treatment.

Starting Jan. 1, every unit will be required to record its Marines and sailors who suffer, or previously had suffered, a traumatic brain injury at any time.

Under a policy announced Dec. 9, commanders will have a new tracking tool, the Neurocognitive Assessment Tool, or NCAT, for their unit medical personnel to record TBIs and suspected concussions into the Medical Readiness Reporting System, a comprehensive database.

The goal is “to keep faith with our Marines, sailors and their families by providing our commanders and medical personnel better diagnostic and treatment options for concussion or TBI,” Marine administrative message 713/11 states. In addition, “unit commanders are responsible for compliance ... and ensuring all members of their command are afforded the opportunity to seek medical attention or treatment.”

The new program establishes a system that tracks Marines and sailors until they leave the service, so even those who change duty stations or get orders to school or temporary assignment will be available via the database.

“We want to ensure the health and safety of our Marines and sailors. If they are exposed to an event, we want to make sure they receive the proper treatment” before they return to full duty, officials said in a response to questions provided by Capt. Greg Wolf, a Marine Corps spokesman at the Pentagon.

“Their commanders can maintain visibility on them, no matter where they go within our Corps,” officials said. “Once a Marine or sailor becomes a civilian, there will be an institutional record to assist with future health care.”

Every active and reserve unit will enter all new diagnoses of TBIs and concussions into the MRRS. But they also will include any prior TBIs and concussive events — many of which don’t reveal symptoms until long after the event — that are suffered or diagnosed by unit members before Jan. 1. The Marine Corps is developing additional guidance on how to document those cases for tracking.

“The system allows for retroactive entries,” officials said, “and we are working to develop the policy and procedures to capture retroactive cases so all Marines and sailors receive the care they need. We did not want to wait, however, for these to be developed before we began tracking TBIs and events as they occur.”

TBIs are the most common wound of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and most concussions are considered mild TBIs. An untold number of service members have suffered multiple concussions or TBIs, which experts say can increase the odds of more severe symptoms including depression, memory loss and post-traumatic stress disorder.

“We’ve learned that we need to track concussive events because those events can render an individual more susceptible to TBI, and to help with TBI diagnoses when delayed symptoms appear,” officials said. “This module will allow us to monitor those Marines and sailors and provide them with better medical care.”