Kristine O'Phelan1,2, Dalnam Park3, Thomas Ernst2, Andrew Stenger2, Steven Buchthal2, Renat Yakupov, Linda Chang2
1Neurology, University of Miami , Miami, Fl, USA; 2Medicine, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI, USA; 3Neuroscience Institute, The Queen's Medical Center, Honolulu, HI, USA
Substance abuse is common among patients with traumatic brain injury. Little is known about its effects on brain metabolism in this setting. Twelve TBI survivors were recruited. MP-RAGE, FLAIR , 1H MRS, DTI ,ASL MRI were performed. Pericontusional: rCBF was inversely correlated with post-injury day(PID). rCBF was inversely related to tensor trace. rCBF showed a trend to correlate with [NAA]. Contralateral: scans on later PIDs showed lower NAA and lactate, but higher tensor trace. [NAA] correlated with [lactate], not rCBF. Tissue ischemia may be a risk for pericontusional tissue while contralateral regions show evidence of axonal injury but not ischemia.