Turner Stephanie M, Sloley Stephanie S, Bailie Jason M, Babakhanyan Ida, Gregory Emma
Traumatic Brain Injury Center of Excellence, Defense Health Agency, Silver Spring, MD, United States.
General Dynamics Information Technology, Silver Spring, MD, United States.
Front Neurol. 2022 Apr 6;13:835752. doi: 10.3389/fneur.2022.835752. eCollection 2022.
The Department of Defense (DOD) has recently prioritized the investigation of the acute and chronic adverse brain health and performance effects of low-level blast (LLB) generated by the use of weapons systems. While acute exposure can be quantified by sensor technology, career exposure has no widely accepted and validated measure for characterization. Currently, distinct research groups are developing and validating four promising measures to estimate career blast exposure history: the Salisbury Blast Interview, Blast Exposure Threshold Survey, Blast Ordnance and Occupational Exposure Measure, and the Blast Frequency and Symptom Severity. Each measure offers an assessment of blast history that is uniquely beneficial to addressing specific research questions. However, use of divergent strategies is not efficient to accelerate the field's understanding of the impact of career exposure and Service-connected health outcomes. As a DOD-wide solution, collaboration across these groups is required to develop a tool(s) that can be standardized across research studies and, ultimately, pared down to be implemented in clinical settings. Here, we overview the current four measures and provide a perspective on the way forward for optimization and/or combination in support of this solution.
美国国防部（DOD）最近将对武器系统使用产生的低强度爆炸（LLB）对大脑健康和性能的急性和慢性不良影响的调查列为优先事项。虽然急性暴露可以通过传感器技术进行量化，但职业暴露尚无广泛接受和验证的表征测量方法。目前，不同的研究团队正在开发和验证四种有前景的方法来估计职业爆炸暴露史：索尔兹伯里爆炸访谈、爆炸暴露阈值调查、爆炸军械和职业暴露测量以及爆炸频率和症状严重程度。每种方法都提供了对爆炸史的评估，这对于解决特定的研究问题具有独特的益处。然而，使用不同的策略并不能有效地加速该领域对职业暴露影响和与服役相关的健康结果的理解。作为国防部范围内的解决方案，需要这些团队之间进行合作，以开发一种可以在各项研究中标准化的工具，并最终简化以便在临床环境中实施。在此，我们概述了当前的四种方法，并就支持该解决方案的优化和/或组合的未来方向提供了一个观点。
