Creation of an Expanded Barell Matrix to IdentifyTraumatic Brain Injuries of U.S. Military Members

http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA529724&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf

Creation of an Expanded Barell Matrix to IdentifyTraumatic Brain
Injuries of U.S. Military Members

This paper describes the creation ofa new traumatic brain injury (TBI) dassification system, the Barell+ system, derived by the Center for Army Medical Department Strategic Stud ies, The Barell+ system is an expansion of the standard international Sarell body region by nature of injury diagnosis matrix developed by the Intemational Collaborative Effort on Injury Statistics.The expanded version (Barell+) was created as a result of a mapping effort between the original Sarell matrix and the Department of Defense severity class ification system used for surveillance by the Defense and Veteran Brain Injury Center (DVBIC). Starting with the Barell TBI category definitions, 19 additional TBI-related diagnosis codes from the DVBIC classification were mapped into the resulting Sarell+ matrix. The new Sarell+ system is compared with the original Barel I matrix and the DVBIC classification system. We recommend using the TBI
frequency distributions created by the Sarell+ system as input data in U.S. military medical modeling and simulation efforts because it better reflects the actual distribution ofTB I injuries.