There's actually a resource meant exactly for this: <a href="https://members.aapmr.org/AAPMR/AAPMR_FINDER.aspx" target="_blank">https://members.aapmr.org/AAPMR/AAPMR_FINDER.aspx</a>
 
For best search results I recommend setting:
<ul>
 <li>Zip code: your zip code</li>
 <li>Radius (miles): at least 50 miles (for more results)</li>
 <li>Areas of Practice: Brain Injury</li>
</ul>
Happy searching!

How can I find a physiatrist near me?

Answer transcribed from <a style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.brightwayhealth.org/podcast-episodes/1%3A-dr.-thomas-franz-pt-1" target="_blank">Brightway's interview with Dr. Thomas Franz</a>: If it's a severe traumatic brain injury, I mean severe enough where somebody has an operation on the brain or where they're hospitalized for a long period or there's a prolonged period of coma or altered mental status. Most of those patients are going to need to be seen by a physiatrist in the hospital in consultation and often transferred to a rehabilitation unit or facility to complete their recovery from an acute injury. Whether that's an accident or in some cases the acquired brain injury might be due to a hemorrhage in the brain, other conditions that aren't traumatic. But regardless, if the functional result is the same, people will likely in those more severe cases require physiatry and rehabilitation both in the hospital and immediately afterwards for some weeks in some form of either a hospital-based unit or freestanding rehab hospital. If someone has a lesser brain injury, but it's really not even a concussion, for example, a person might have a single concussion and thankfully 85 percent or so of people with concussions maybe you're seen in the emergency room, they're told some symptoms to look out for, they have a few days of problems and then they go on their way. But 15 of patients have some persistent symptoms that can be light sensitivity, dizziness, migraines, and if these things are persisting, you're really going to more likely get relief for those conditions from a physiatrist, somebody who is familiar with brain injury than from a lot of your general medical community.

Division Director PM&R

When should a brain injury survivor see a physiatrist?

Answer transcribed from <a style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.brightwayhealth.org/podcast-episodes/1%3A-dr.-thomas-franz-pt-1" target="_blank">Brightway's interview with Dr. Thomas Franz</a>: ﻿Well, when we're looking at acquired brain injury there's a wide range of medications and procedures, for example, that the physician might do over and above prescribing physical therapy or occupational therapy or speech therapy. Spasticity or abnormal muscle tone, for example, is a very difficult problem after acquired brain injury for many people, and sometimes botulinum toxin or botox injections are used. It's first and foremost a muscle relaxing medication. It blocks some of the impulses where the nerve connects to the muscle. It's not a cosmetic or wrinkle treatment despite the popular press opinion to the contrary. Peripheral nerve blocks can be used for the same purpose, serial casting can be prescribed which is usually done in conjunction with a physical therapist or some type of technician to reverse a contracture that might come as a result of spasticity. We may well prescribe medications to reduce the tone along the line of medications. We may also help with behavior management. Not all physicians - even, for example, not most psychiatrists are not very comfortable with acquired brain injury and usually, either a neurologist or a neuropsychiatrist or a rehabilitation physician who has experience with brain injury will be the one to manage behavioral medications. There is a role in using heat or electrical stimulation or pain medication to to manage pain. That's another role we fulfill as well. Some patients require prescription of specialized equipment whether that be bracing or prosthetic devices or equipment to allow people to perform self-care tasks, whether it's something as simple as a reacher or a socket or something more complicated; for example, adaptive or assistive technologies that are computer-based. And with the proliferation of tablets and phones most of the things that used to require a dedicated device for speech or other things are now just apps. So this has become an exploding field for us and frankly a lot of the smart home technologies are now being very useful for people with limited mobility or limited use of their their body.

What interventions does a physiatrist perform?

Answer transcribed from <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.brightwayhealth.org/podcast-episodes/1%3A-dr.-thomas-franz-pt-1" target="_blank">Brightway's interview with Dr. Thomas Franz</a>: Sure, well, a physiatrist or a specialist in the field of physical medicine and rehabilitation works really to help people with conditions that can't necessarily be cured but can be treated through a combination of medications and therapies. And by therapies I mean physical therapy, occupational therapy, cognitive retraining or cognitive therapy, speech therapy, and we have a broad base of training in both musculoskeletal and neurologic conditions. We treat both, for example, strokes, spinal cord injuries, brain injuries as well as people with trauma, somebody who had a traumatic brain injury might also have a dislocated hip or a fractured spine, and during our training we learned how to help people recover from those injuries and regain and the emphasis especially is really is on restoring function as much as possible. So that a person can be made independent through the use of some sort of technology, then that is fine because the goal is to get them back to doing things for themselves as much as possible, and if they can be restored completely obviously that's ideal but that's not always possible right now.

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