Articles: brain-injuries.
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Journal of neurosurgery · May 1988
Prognostic value of auditory brain-stem responses for late postconcussion symptoms following minor head injury.
Minor head injury is frequently followed by a subjective postconcussion syndrome. Brain-stem auditory evoked responses (BAER's) were found to be pathological in different small series of patients with a postconcussion syndrome who were examined months after sustaining a slight cranial or cervical trauma; abnormal BAER's have also been reported in larger groups of patients examined early after minor head injury. A relationship between these findings and late subjective symptoms has never been demonstrated. ⋯ This study confirms the disturbance of brain-stem function in some head-injured patients. However, the lack of correlation with a postconcussion syndrome limits the prognostic value of BAER recordings for postconcussion syndrome. The data suggest that BAER's not be used for medicolegal evaluation of patients with a postconcussion syndrome.