Traumatic brain injury haunts children for years with variety of functional problems: T...(in the brain's ability to heal itself. ...),Health

In the second study, conducted by Talin Babikian, PhD, and Robert Asarnow, PhD, at the University of California-Los Angeles, the authors analyzed 28 carefully selected articles published between 1988 and 2007. The children were sorted by TBI severity and time since injury. Severity levels were mild, moderate or severe TBI, and follow-ups were on average 0-5 months, 6-23 months, or 24+ months, for 14 key aspects of neurocognition.

According to their analysis:

• The worse the injury, the worse the neurocognitive outcome, especially on measures of general intellectual functioning and processing speed.

• Time didn't heal all. The moderate and severe groups were even more similar by the third time band, especially on general intellectual functioning and attention/executive skills.

• Most problems stick. Despite modest recovery in intellectual functioning and attention, weaknesses in many children with moderate TBI persist even two years after the injury, compared to the children in control groups.

• Memory and visual-spatial skills seemed more or less normal by two-plus years, with even the moderately injured performing in the same range as controls.

• Children with severe TBI needed more help, showing robust and significant problems within months on IQ, executive functioning (processing speed, attention), and verbal memory (both immediate and delayed). After two or more years, all areas studied were impaired.

"It appears that there are significant, persistent neurocognitive impairments in a subset of children with severe TBI," the authors concluded. Despite some recovery during the first two years, children in this group not only failed to catch up to peers, but appeared to fall further behind over time. Thus, severe traumatic brain injury may throw off children's normal devel
'/>"/>