Brain injury : [BI]
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Brain injury : [BI] · Jan 2019
Computer Tomography (CT) for head injury: adherence to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) criteria.
Objective Head injury is a common presentation to the emergency department yet adherence to guidelines for management is suboptimal. Our study assesses adherence to National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) computed tomography (CT) head guidelines at a teaching hospital in the United Kingdom. It critically evaluates the efficacy of interventions. ⋯ The mean time to report all scans decreased from 89 to 57 minutes. The survey results were encouraging. Conclusion Adherence to NICE guidelines for head injury is inadequate but can be improved by interventions.
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Brain injury : [BI] · Jan 2019
Multicenter Study Comparative Study Observational StudyComparison of the Neurobehavioral Symptom Inventory and the Rivermead Postconcussion Symptoms Questionnaire.
Objective: This study sought to determine the similarity of constructs measured by the Neurobehavioral Symptom Inventory (NSI) and Rivermead Postconcussive Symptoms Questionnaire (RPQ) and the potential for interchangeability of scores from the two scales. Setting: Three acute inpatient rehabilitation hospitals in the USA. Participants: 497 community dwelling persons with traumatic brain injury (TBI) who completed the NSI and the RPQ during the same assessment. ⋯ A crosswalk between the two measures was created by equating scores from the scales based on percentile ranks. Conclusion: Results indicate substantial conceptual and empirical overlap between the NSI and RPQ. The percentile crosswalk developed from this dataset may allow combined analysis of post-concussive symptoms from datasets that include either the NSI or the RPQ.
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Brain injury : [BI] · Jan 2019
Severe acquired brain injury aetiologies, early clinical factors, and rehabilitation outcomes: a retrospective study on pediatric patients in rehabilitation.
Objective: Studies on pediatric severe acquired brain injury (sABI) outcomes focused mostly on single etiologies, not clarifying the independent role of clinical factors, and scantly explored inter-dependence between variables. We assessed associations of clinical factors at admission with essential outcomes, controlling for inter-dependence and sABI etiology. Methods: We reviewed the clinical records of 280 patients with traumatic and 292 with non-traumatic sABI, discharged from intensive care to pediatric neurological rehabilitation. ⋯ Factor analysis of inter-dependence between GCS, time before rehabilitation, dysautonomia, device use, produced the indicators "injury severity" and "neurological dysfunction", independent from sABI etiology, age, sex, and admittance GOS. Multivariate analyzes showed that: coma duration, GOS outcome, and length of stay, which may depend on rehabilitation courses, were directly associated with injury severity, neurological dysfunction, and patients' age; death and persistent vegetative states were also associated with etiology. Conclusion: Future studies should analyze larger cohorts and investigate mechanisms linking specific etiologies and patients' age with outcomes.
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Brain injury : [BI] · Jan 2019
Prevalence of post-concussion-like symptoms in the general population in Italy, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom.
Objectives: To evaluate the frequency of post-concussion symptoms and prevalence and risk factors of post-concussion syndrome (PCS) in the general population, investigate the association between the Rivermead Post-Concussion Symptoms Questionnaire (RPQ) and self-perceived health, and evaluate differences between three European countries. Methods: A web-based survey including the RPQ and EQ-5D was conducted among representative samples in three European countries. Results: A total of 11,759 respondents completed the questionnaire. ⋯ All items of the RPQ were positively correlated with the EQ-5D and the strongest positive correlation (0.633, p<0.001) was between RPQ item 'feeling depressed or tearful' and EQ-5D domain 'anxiety/depression'. Conclusions: We found a high frequency of post-concussion-like symptoms and PCS in the general population, indicating that these symptoms are not specific for patients with traumatic brain injury (TBI), and PCS is not a unique syndrome after TBI. Therefore, the use of post-concussion symptoms and PCS as outcome following mild TBI should be interpreted with caution.
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Brain injury : [BI] · Jan 2019
Loss of consciousness and altered mental state predicting depressive and post-concussive symptoms after mild traumatic brain injury.
Objective: Limited studies exist on the association between loss of consciousness (LOC) and altered mental state (AMS) and development of depressive and post-concussive symptoms within six months after mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI). We tested the hypothesis that presence of both LOC and AMS predict the highest risk of symptoms within the first six months post-mTBI compared to either variable alone, and that LOC alone is more strongly associated with these symptoms. Research design: We analyzed data from 407 subjects with mTBI from the Head injury S erum M arkers for A ssessing R esponse to T rauma (HeadSMART) cohort, a prospective cohort of patients post-TBI presenting to two urban emergency departments. ⋯ LOC was associated only with post-concussive symptoms at one month (OR = 1.55;p = .048). Among those without LOC, AMS was associated with depressive symptoms at one month (OR = 2.24; p = .028). Conclusions: AMS predicts post-mTBI depressive symptoms both in the acute and chronic mTBI phases whereas LOC is a more sensitive predictor of post-concussive symptoms in the acute mTBI period.