Traumatic Brain Injury News

Traumatic Brain Injury: A Disease Process, Not an Event
August 16, 2010 | Journal of Neurotrauma

A new article published in the Journal of Neurotrauma further advances the position that a traumatic brain injury (TBI) is an ongoing and sometimes permanent chronic disease, rather than a mere "event" – characterized as a final outcome that once fixed, requires no further treatment beyond brief rehabilitation and will have no lasting effects on other organ systems.  Researchers conducted a systematic review of numerous studies regarding TBI and its short term and long term characteristics. Results of the meta-analysis suggest that TBI is a chronic affliction that requires long-term treatment contrary to the belief advanced by insurance industry and many healthcare providers: that a head and brain trauma is a short term affliction – a broken brain, much like a broken bone.

Data shows that a traumatic brain injury can increase long-term mortality and reduces life expectancy. TBIs can have lasting effects on other organ systems and have been found to precede higher instances of epilepsy, Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, sexual dysfunction, and psychiatric diseases.

The article aims to "encourage the classification of TBI as the beginning of an ongoing, perhaps lifelong process, that impacts multiple organ systems and may be disease causative and accelerative... TBI should be managed as a chronic disease and defined as such by health care and insurance providers." Researchers say that one of the advantages of recognizing the chronic nature of a TBI is that future research would focus on discovering therapies to successfully interrupt the long-term risks associated with head trauma.

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