Over a million soldiers have served in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Of the men and women who have returned from combat, more than 100,000 have been diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Over 300,000 more have been told they have a traumatic brain injury (TBI). In many cases, symptoms are the same: insomnia, anxiety, irritability, poor concentration and limited impulse control.
The treatments for these two conditions are very different. The problem is, there hasn’t been a consistently accurate diagnostic test to distinguish between PTSD and TBI. That changed earlier this year when two studies, one of which involved 20,746 patients, found that a type of medical imaging called single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) showed clear differences in the brains of people with TBI or PTSD. Largely through analyzing how well blood flows (or doesn’t) through various parts of the brain, SPECT scans show with 80 to ...
