St Emlyns JC - By Stevan Bruijns - January 29, 2023
Annually, around 1.4 million people in England and Wales attend emergency departments (EDs) following a head injury. This may sound like a lot, but actually, the incidence of death in this cohort is very low. Unsurprising, at least 95% of these patients present with a normal or minimally impaired conscious level.
A normal CT brain on top of this may be reassuring, but a growing pool of evidence suggest that mild traumatic brain injury (TBI) is not as innocuous as it may seem at first. Many patients suffer with persistent symptoms following a diagnosis of mild TBI, restricting their daily lives and affecting their livelihoods.
In this study (Outcomes in Patients With Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Without Acute Intracranial Traumatic Injury), Debbie Madhok and her team show that following mild TBI, a fairly high number of patients continue to suffer with persistent symptoms at 2 weeks and 6 months. The abstract is below, but as always we strongly recommend you read the full paper yourself.