Traumatic Brain Injury Research at the Minneapolis Medical Research Foundation

Key Researcher

Gaylan Rockswold, MD

Gaylan Rockswold, MD PhD, is Chief of Neurosurgery at Hennepin County Medical Center and Professor of Neurosurgery at the University of Minnesota. He has had an active clinical practice for 32 years and has cared for thousands of patients with various neurosurgical problems.

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Traumatic Brain Injury

Research conducted at the Traumatic Brain Injury center has greatly advanced our understanding of how to treat traumatic brain injuries. The current Neurosurgery research project is "Comparison Between Different Types of Oxygen Treatment Following Severe Closed Head Injury".

In recently published research findings, Dr. Gaylan Rockswold and Dr. Sarah Rockswold report that the combined use of hyperbaric oxygen (HBO2) and normobaric hyperoxia (NBH) therapies provides better outcomes in patients with severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) than the standard intensive neurosurgical care recommended for this type of injury. Read more about their findings here.

Traumatic Brain Injury Statistics

Every 15 seconds someone is injured by a TBI in the U.S.
A death due to a TBI occurs every 5 minutes (50,000 deaths annually).
Someone is permanently disabled by a TBI every 5 minutes.
2 million traumatic brain injuries occur per year.
There are 1 million emergency room visits due to a TBI each year.
500,000 TBI injuries require hospitalization.
Direct and indirect costs of TBI injury amount to $56 billion in the U.S. annually.
TBI is the greatest cause of death and severe disability within the young adult age group.
Mild TBIs, or concussions, alone comprise 80% of all brain injuries and cost the United States an estimated 17 billion dollars.