By the Health.mil Staff
The Military Acute Concussion
Evaluation, or MACE, is the Defense Department’s standard for clinical
assessment of mild traumatic brain injury (TBI) in deployed settings. MACE is
the most widely-used clinical interview tool for early detection of
concussions, the most common form of TBI sustained in the military. MACE was
redesigned this year, along with the “Concussion Management in Deployed
Settings,” another critical tool used to help first-tier health care providers
improve cognitive screenings and neurological evaluations in theater.
The first two questions on the MACE ask
about details of the injury event and whether there was alteration of
consciousness, loss of consciousness or post-traumatic amnesia. A combination
of an injury event and one of the other conditions signifies a concussion has
occurred, which requires continued screening. Doctors say it’s important to
have these improved tools in the deployed setting since most combat medics are
not medical doctors. These first responders benefit from having a decision tree
type of guidance to aid in their assessments and to get the right type of help
to the wounded.
You can learn more about the MACE
improvements from Dr. Donald Marion, senior clinical consultant for the Defense
and Veterans Brain Injury Center (DVBIC), a Defense Centers of Excellence for
Psychological Health and Traumatic Brain Injury (DCoE) center on DCoE’s blog.
And, read more about TBI on health.mil.
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