Berks County Medical Society Medical Record Spring 2020 - 26
M e d i c a l R ec o r d F e a t u r e
Taking the Offensive
in the War on PTSD
by U.S. Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.)
Posted Dec 21, 2019
M
arine Corps Sgt. Dakota Meyer and his team came under such
heavy enemy fire near the Afghan village of Ganjigal that it
sounded to him like they were surrounded by static electricity.
Despite imminently life-threatening dangers, he intentionally made five
forays headlong into a hail of gunfire, killing several enemy insurgents while
evacuating two dozen Afghan soldiers and recovering the bodies of four
Americans, including three of his team members.
A hero by any stretch of the definition, Sgt. Meyer became the first living
Marine in more than four decades to receive a Medal of Honor - America's
highest and most prestigious personal military decoration awarded for
extraordinary acts of valor.
But his heroism came at a great personal cost - the war came home with
him.
Anxious, quick to anger and unable to get the war out of his head, Sgt.
Meyer was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). He is far
from alone.
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs estimates between 11 and 20
percent of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom Veterans have
PTSD in a given year; 12 percent of Gulf War Veterans; and, 15 percent of
Vietnam Veterans suffer with PTSD annually. Sadly, only 40 percent of our
heroes will find relief with current treatments.
Left untreated, PTSD can be debilitating, leading to a decline in quality
of life and causing significant medical, mental health, interpersonal, and social
impairment. More threatening though, PTSD has a strong link to suicide risk,
with the lack of effective treatment now seen as a major contributing factor in
the grisly number of Veteran suicides that have soared to roughly 20 per day.
Unacceptable.
Because we have a moral duty to do everything we can to ease the suffering
of Veterans and their families who have risked everything to protect our
Freedoms and American way of life, I have created landmark legislation that
would provide our hometown heroes with unrestricted access to a promising
treatment.
Called Stellate Ganglion Block (SGB) therapy, a procedure that has been
used to relieve chronic pain since the 1920s, this rather simple, outpatient
procedure has been proven to alleviate common PTSD symptoms such as
hyperarousal, exaggerated startle responses, and anxiety. By injecting an
anesthetic agent on the stellate ganglion, a collection of nerves in the neck
that controls the activation of the "fight or flight" survival reflex, it helps bring
relief to regions of the cerebral cortex thought to be abnormally activated in
sufferers of PTSD.
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Berks County Medical Society Medical Record Spring 2020
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