More than half of people who experience mild traumatic brain injury (TBI) are not recovering after six months, a new study has warned.
A dedicated Commission by world-leading experts has highlighted the advances and persisting and new challenges in prevention, clinical care and research in TBI.
Among a number of key challenges, the Commission’s report finds that more than 90 per cent of TBIs are categorised as “mild”, but over 50 per cent of such patients do not fully recover by six months after injury.
Improving outcome in these patients would be a huge public health benefit, the study notes. A multidimensional approach to outcome assessment is advocated, including a focus on mental health and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Other key issues highlighted in the report include:
- Outcome after TBI is poorer in females compared with males, but reasons for this are not clear
- Major disparities in care, including lower treatment intensity for patients injured by low-energy mechanisms, deficiencies in access to rehabilitation and insufficient follow-up in patients with “mild” TBI
- Advances in diagnostics and treatment approaches.
“The scale of traumatic brain injury around the world is staggering, with 55 million people affected at an estimated cost of $400billion each year,” says Antonio Belli, Professor of Trauma Neurosurgery at the University of Birmingham and an author of the Commission report.
“As a leading cause of injury-related death, this significant report pulls together both the successes in understanding and treating brain injury as well as the task ahead for policy makers, clinicians and researchers.”
The 2022 Commission has been produced by world-leading experts and was presented at the Collaborative European Neurotrauma Effectiveness Research in TBI project (CENTER-TBI) at their meeting last week in Antwerp, Belgium.
This is an update to the first Lancet Neurology Commission on TBI, which was launched at the European Parliament in 2017.
The 2017 Commission set out priorities and recommendations to address the challenges in TBI from the perspectives of policymakers, clinicians, and researchers.
Since then, new knowledge has been generated by large observational studies, including CENTER-TBI and other studies conducted under the umbrella of the International Traumatic Brain Injury Research (InTBIR) initiative, designed as a coalition of funding agencies and scientists to advance the care for patients with TBI through collaborative efforts.
