Attacks leaving troops with brain injuries

Tucsoncitizen: A growing number of U.S. troops whose body armor helped them survive bomb and rocket attacks face brain damage as a result of the blasts, a type of injury that some military doctors say has become the signature wound of the Iraq war.

Traumatic brain injury is the sort of wound that many soldiers in previous wars never lived long enough to suffer.

The explosions often cause brain damage similar to "shaken baby syndrome," says Warren Lux, a neurologist at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.

"You've got great body armor on, and you don't die," says Louis French, a neuropsychologist at Walter Reed. "But there's a whole other set of possible consequences. It's sort of like when they started putting air bags in cars and started seeing all these orthopedic injuries they didn't have before" Link