Department of Defense Numbers for Traumatic Brain Injury

This information is designed to provide service members, their families, veterans, the general public, and other concerned citizens with the most comprehensive and accurate figures available regarding diagnosed cases of TBI within the U.S. military. Information is collected from electronic medical records and analyzed by the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center in cooperation with the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center. Numbers for the current year will be updated on a quarterly basis. Other data will be updated annually. At this time, the MHS is unable to provide information regarding cause of injury or location because that information is not available in most medical records. The numbers represent actual medical diagnoses of TBI within the U.S. Military. Other, larger numbers routinely reported in the media must be considered inaccurate because they do not reflect actual medical diagnoses. Many of these larger numbers are developed utilizing sources such as the Post Deployment Health Assessment (PDHA) or Post Deployment Health Reassessment (PDHRA). However, these documents are assessment tools with TBI screening questions and are not diagnostic tools.