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Public Policy of the Brain Injury Network
Policy approved by the Board 6-12-10
The Subclassification Hierarchy of Acquired Brain Injury (ABI):
Acquired brain injuries include injury from traumatic brain injury (tbi), stroke, brain tumor, brain illness, anoxic/hypoxic injury, etc. ABI's should not be divided into two subcategories, traumatic and non-traumatic. Please remove the traumatic and non-traumatic emphasis from the acquired brain injury hierarchy. It is better to state that ABI's include (the co-equal) brain injuries from stroke, tumor, illness, poisoning, trauma, etc.
Please think about the logic problems we all learned in grade school. For example, in the barnyard there are many types of animals such as horses, cows, and chickens. Animals in the barnyard are not divided into two subclassifications, horses and non-horses. Nor are they divided into two categories, cows and non-cows. Horses, cows, and chickens are each equal in importance in the "barnyard animal" subhierachy. Similarly, acquired brain injuries should not be divided into two categories, traumatic and non-traumatic. It does not seem logical that the determinative factor in the classification system should be whether or not an abi was a tbi. Nor should it be whether or not it initiated from a stroke, a brain tumor, a brain illness, etc. Each of these scenarios is a co-equal causation. Why should any one causation be elevated above the others in the hierarchy? All of the causations should have equal footing in the hierarchy.