Introduction: NASA's Human Research Program is using a probabilistic risk assessment approach to identify acute and chronic medical risks to manned spaceflight. The objective of this project was to estimate the likelihood of a neurological head injury to a crewmember severe enough to require medical assessment, treatment, or evacuation during a typical International Space Station (ISS) increment.
Methods: A 2 degree-of-freedom analytical model of the human head was created to allow for analysis of the impact response. The output of the model is acceleration of the head, which was used to determine the probability that the simulated impact resulted in a head injury with an Abbreviated Injury Scale (AIS) score of 3 or greater. These data were then integrated into a probabilistic risk assessment, which outputs a likelihood of injury with a representative measure of the uncertainty.
Results: A Monte Carlo simulation was performed to vary input parameters over their defined distributions. The mean probability of a moderate neurological injury (AIS 3 or greater) occurring due to a head impact by a crewmember translating through the ISS is 1.16 x 10(-4) per 6-mo mission increment (2.32 x 10(-4) per year).
Discussion: Our head injury prediction model has shown that there is a low, yet not insignificant, probability of neurological head injury of AIS score 3 or greater. The results from this simulation will be input into the parent Integrated Medical Model, which incorporates the risks of over 80 different medical events in order to inform mission planning scenarios.