Deirdre R. Dawson

Head injury in young adults: long-term outcome☆☆☆

OBJECTIVE To describe the long-term outcome 5 years after injury of young adults who were 15 to 19 years old at the time of their head injuries. DESIGN A retrospective cohort. The health records of 62 consecutive eligible subjects were abstracted for baseline sociodemographic, health, and injury variables. A telephone interview was administered to assess quality of life, impairment, disability, and handicap. SETTING Canadas largest trauma center, Sunnybrook Health Science Centre, Toronto, Canada. SUBJECTS Of the 58 subjects (94%) who were traced at follow-up, 51 agreed to participate. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES The Medical Outcomes Study SF-36, Head Injury Symptom Checklist, selected disability measures, Community Integration Questionnaire. RESULTS Of the 8 summary items of the Medical Outcomes Study SF-36, subjects scored lowest on mental health. There were no significant differences between mild and more severely injured groups in all quality of life measures. Subjects classified with mild head injury overall reported more symptoms from the Head Injury Symptom Checklist. Subjects with more severe injuries had lower community integration scores (p < .05). CONCLUSIONS Overall, mental health is an important area of concern at follow-up for all subjects. Adolescents with apparent mild head injury can have disabling symptoms many years after injury.

Assessment of strategic self-regulation in traumatic brain injury: its relationship to injury severity and psychosocial outcome.

Standard neuropsychological tests administered in a constrained and artificial laboratory environment are often insensitive to the real-life deficits faced by patients with traumatic brain injury (TBI). The Revised Strategy Application Test (R-SAT) creates an unstructured environment in the laboratory in which environmental cues and internal habits oppose the most efficient strategy, thus mimicking the real-life situations that are problematic for patients with TBI. In this study, R-SAT performance was related both to severity of TBI (i.e., depth of coma) sustained 2-3 years earlier and to quality of life outcome as assessed by the Sickness Impact Profile. This relationship held after accounting for variance attributable to TBI-related slowing and inattention. These findings support the validity of the R-SAT and suggest that behavioral correlates of quality of life outcome in TBI can be assessed in the laboratory with unstructured tasks.

Return to productivity following traumatic brain injury: Cognitive, psychological, physical, spiritual, and environmental correlates

Purpose.The purpose of this study was to investigate the determinants and correlates of return to productivity (RTP) defined here as return to paid employment and/or school four years following traumatic brain injury (TBI). Method.Participants included 46 people with TBI, part of a prospective, cohort study, and 14 friend/family member controls all employed and/or in school at time of injury or inception into the study. Variables were selected for investigation based on two models of recovery. Demographic and injury severity data including time to recover free recall were collected at time of injury, on admission to a trauma unit. Data on other variables (neuropsychological, psychological, physical, spiritual, environmental) were collected concurrent with productivity status at a mean of 4.3 years post-TBI. Results.Time to recover free recall (measured acutely), neuropsychological status, pain severity, depression, and the use of maladaptive coping behaviours were all related to productivity status (p < 0.05). When these variables were entered into exploratory, planned hierarchical logistic regression models time to free recall, pain, and maladaptive coping remained in the models with depression only dropping out because of the high correlation with pain (r > 0.80). Conclusions.Injury severity (time to free recall), physical status (pain), and psychological status (depression, coping) are important to understanding differences in productivity outcomes. Addressing pain, depression and coping in rehabilitation programs may have a positive impact on outcomes.

Mild traumatic brain injury from motor vehicle accidents: Factors associated with return to work

OBJECTIVES To describe return to work (RTW) for motor vehicle accident (MVA) survivors with mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI) and to examine relationships between RTW and injury severity, cognitive impairment, social interaction, discharge disposition, and sociodemographics. DESIGN Inception cohort assessed within 1 month of injury and at follow-up 6 to 9 months (mean = 7.4) after injury, for comparisons on outcome of RTW. SETTING Tertiary care center in Toronto (time 1); at home for follow-up. PARTICIPANTS Fifty patients with MTBI resulting from MVA who were consecutively admitted during a 20-month period ending April 1994. Thirteen of 63 eligible patients refused consent or were lost to follow-up. Mean age was 31; 62% were men. ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA (1) patients had been working; (2) they had no history of head injury, neurologic disease, or psychiatric illness requiring hospitalization; and (3) they had no catastrophic impairment from accident. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE Return to work (at premorbid or modified level). RESULTS Of the 42% who returned to work, 12% resumed their premorbid level of employment and 30% returned to modified work. There were significant differences (p<.05) between the groups in level of social interaction, premorbid occupation, and discharge disposition. On one test of cognitive functioning the difference was at p = .06. CONCLUSION Social interaction, jobs with greater decision-making latitude, and discharge home were positively related to RTW for this population. Cognitive impairment within the first month was not a reliable indicator of RTW potential.

Executive function and coping at one-year post traumatic brain injury

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between executive function and coping at one-year-post traumatic brain injury (TBI). TBI and matched control groups completed a coping questionnaire and a neuropsychological test series. In the TBI group, better executive performance was related to the use of problem focused coping (considered more adaptive). Conversely, lower executive performance was related to the use of emotion focused coping (considered more maladaptive). Planned hierarchical regression showed that executive function contributed significantly to the use of problem focused coping above and beyond pre-morbid intelligence and injury severity. Implications for cognitive rehabilitation are discussed.

Ventral frontal contribution to self-regulation: Convergence of episodic memory and inhibition

Abstract Ventral frontal brain damage is associated with impaired self-regulation of behaviour in unstructured situations (self-regulatory disorder; SRD). This report attempts to integrate this brain-behaviour correlation with earlier animal literature on disinhibition and recent cognitive neuroscience literature on the frontal lobes and episodic memory. Data are presented from patient ML (Levine etal., Brain 1998; 121: 1951-73), who has isolated retrograde amnesia, ventral frontal dysfunction and SRD. Impaired strategic self-regulation of behaviour was documented with psychosocial outcome questionnaires and two laboratory analogues of real-life unstructured situations: a strategy application task and a gambling task. Previous findings of deficits in anterograde episodic memory (i.e. re-experiencing) using the remember/ know distinction were replicated and extended. The role of disinhibition as a mechanism for SRD was supported by MCs severely impaired performance on object alternation, a task with docume...

Cognitive rehabilitation in the elderly: A randomized trial to evaluate a new protocol

This study provides an introduction to, and overview of, several papers that resulted from a randomized control trial that evaluated a new cognitive rehabilitation protocol. The program was designed to improve general strategic abilities in ways that would be expressed in a broad range of functional domains. The trial, which was conducted on a sample of older adults who had experienced normal age-related cognitive decline, assessed performance in the following domains: memory, goal management, and psychosocial status. The general rationale for the trial, the overall experimental design, and the approach to statistical analyses that are relevant to each paper are described here. The results for each functional domain are reported in separate papers in this series.

From margins to mainstream: what do we know about work integration for persons with brain injury, mental illness and intellectual disability?

Employment is a right of citizenship and a social determinant of health, but employment rates remain low for persons with disabilities. The purpose of this paper is to examine the principles and practices guiding work integration within the fields of intellectual disability (ID), brain injury, and mental illness and to identify best practices to support transitions to employment across these three groups. This integrative review drew upon an occupational perspective to analyze the current literature. Findings reveal that the need and benefits of working are recognized across disability groups but that philosophical perspectives guiding work integration differ. In the area of mental illness, recovery is seen as a process within which work plays an important role, in ID work is viewed as a planned outcome that is part of the developmental process, and in the field of brain injury, outcomes of employability and employment are emphasized. A common theme across the three disability groups is that in order to facilitate work integration, the person, the job and the work environment are important factors in need of examination. Evidence pointing to the effectiveness of the supported employment model is increasing across these three populations. A framework for guiding the development of further research and for promoting changes to support work integration is presented.

Early Identification and Incidence of Mild TBI in Ontario

OBJECTIVES (1) To examine the variability in diagnosis of mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) in primary care relative to that of an expert reviewer; and (2) to determine the incidence rate of mTBI in Ontario, Canada. METHOD Potential mTBI cases were identified through reviewing three months of Emergency Department (ED) and Family Physician (FP) health records. Potential cases were selected from ED records using the International Classification of Disease, 9th revision, Clinical Modification and External Cause codes and from all FPs records for the time period. Documented diagnoses of mTBI were compared to expert reviewer diagnosis. Incidence of mTBI was determined using the documented diagnoses and data from hospital catchment areas and population census. RESULTS 876 potential mTBI cases were identified, 25 from FP records. Key indicators of mTBI were missing on many records (e.g., 308/876 records had Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) scores). The expert reviewer disagreed with the documented diagnosis in 380/876 cases (kappa = 0.19). The expert reviewer was more likely to give a diagnosis if the GCS was 13-14, if there was documented loss of consciousness and/or post-traumatic amnesia, and/or if there was pathology found on an acute brain scan. Calculated incidence rates of hospital-treated mTBI were 426 or 535/100,000 (expert review--hospital diagnosis). Including family physician cases increased the rate to 493 or 653/100,000. CONCLUSION Health record documentation of key indicators for mTBI is often lacking. Notwithstanding, some patients with mTBI appear to be missed or misdiagnosed by primary care physicians. A more comprehensive case definition resulted in estimated incidence rates higher than previous reports.

Function after motor vehicle accidents : A prospective study of mild head injury and posttraumatic stress

Relationships among mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI), posttraumatic stress (PTS), and function were examined in 99 motor vehicle accident (MVA) admissions: 64 in an MTBI group and 35 in a no-MTBI comparison group. Assessments occurred within the first month and at 6 to 9 months. At follow-up, the sample was moderately disabled on the Sickness Impact Profile (SIP), 71% satisfied on the Reintegration of Normal Living Index (RNL), and 42% had returned to work. Only the SIP Psychosocial score was significantly different for MTBI groups; 24% of the sample showed definite symptoms of PTS. This group was significantly more disabled on the SIP, less satisfied on the RNL, and less likely to return to work. The proportion of variance in outcome explained in each model ranged from 32% (Physical SIP) to 44% (RNL). Results suggest the need for clinicians to be more aware of the strong influence of PTS on functional outcomes.