Jordan Hobson was getting ready for school one morning when she fell down a flight of stairs in her home, hitting her head several times before landing at the bottom. After a trip to an emergency department and an appointment at an area concussion clinic accomplished little in alleviating the 15-year-old’s symptoms, Jordan’s mother, Jackie, learned about a specialized program at Kennedy Krieger Institute.
Led by Dr. Beth Slomine and Dr. Stacy Suskauer, Kennedy Krieger’s Pediatric Brain Injury Program combines compassionate and holistic patient care with cutting-edge brain injury research. Soon, Jordan, who was suffering from hyper-emotionality and constant headaches, was on her way to full recovery.
“It was very real, very awful and very scary,” Jackie Hobson says of the experience.
The Pediatric Brain Injury Program is nationally recognized for treating children and adolescents with intensive rehabilitation needs caused by neurological injury or illness. In 2010, the program added the Concussion Clinic to address the needs of child and adolescent patients who experience mild traumatic brain injuries, such as concussions, but don’t need intensive rehabilitation.
An estimated 2 million children in the United States suffer a concussion each year and thousands more go undetected, according to a recent study in the journal Pediatrics.
