War vets suffer frequent head trauma

[kskiska]

Two out of three troops treated at Walter Reed have head injuries

In the sixth floor speech therapy lab at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, Specialist Hugo Gonzalez is working to rebuild what he's lost.

“Sometimes the word... sometimes the word that I really know, that I really want to use, sometimes they just don't come out,” says Gonzalez.

Gonzalez sustained a serious brain injury in a roadside bomb blast and firefight one night in Iraq. It was captured on film although he never saw it coming.

(snip)

He's not alone. Physicians at Walter Reed are treating brain injured soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan with greater frequency than in past wars. Today, nearly two out of every three soldiers injured in combat, who end up at Walter Reed, also have some type of brain injury — blast injuries mostly.

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