Abstract
Objective: To investigate the relationship between injury severity variables, particularly time to follow commands (TFC) and long-term functional outcomes in paediatric traumatic brain injury (TBI). Methods and procedure: Participants included 40 children with moderate-to-severe TBI discharged from inpatient rehabilitation. Measures of severity were initial Glasgow Coma Scale score, TFC, duration of Post Traumatic Amnesia (PTA) and total duration of impaired consciousness (TFC+PTA). Functional outcome was measured by age-corrected Functional Independence Measure for Children (WeeFIM®) scores at 1-year after discharge. Results: Correlations indicated that injury severity variables (TFC, PTA and TFC+PTA) were all associated with functional outcome. Regression analyses revealed that TFC and TFC+PTA similarly accounted for 49% or 47% of the variance, respectively, in total WeeFIM® score. Thirty-seven of 40 children had good outcome; of the three children with TFC >26 days, two had poor outcome. Conclusion: PTA and TFC+PTA do not provide a benefit over TFC alone for prediction of long-term outcome and TFC is identified earlier in the recovery course. TFC remains an important predictor of functional outcome 1-year after discharge from inpatient rehabilitation after paediatric TBI.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 1056-1062 |
Number of pages | 7 |
Journal | Brain Injury |
Volume | 27 |
Issue number | 9 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 2013 |
Keywords
- Child
- Coma
- Outcome
- PTA
- Traumatic brain injury
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Neuroscience (miscellaneous)
- Developmental and Educational Psychology
- Clinical Neurology