Traumatic Brain Injury in the United States: A Public Health Perspective

Abstract

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a leading cause of death and disability among persons in the United States. Each year, an estimated 1.5 million Americans sustain a TBI. As a result of these injuries, 50,000 people die, 230,000 people are hospitalized and survive, and an estimated 80,000-90,000 people experience the onset of long-term disability. Rates of TBI-related hospitalization have declined nearly 50% since 1980, a phenomenon that may be attributed, in part, to successes in injury prevention and also to changes in hospital admission practices that shift the care of persons with less severe TBI from inpatient to outpatient settings. The magnitude of TBI in the United States requires public health measures to prevent these injuries and to improve their consequences. State surveillance systems can provide reliable data on injury causes and risk factors, identify trends in TBI incidence, enable the development of cause-specific prevention strategies focused on populations at greatest risk, and monitor the effectiveness of such programs. State follow-up registries, built on surveillance systems, can provide more information regarding the frequency and nature of disabilities associated with TBI. This information can help states and communities to design, implement, and evaluate cost-effective programs for people living with TBI and for their families, addressing acute care, rehabilitation, and vocational, school, and community support.

Traumatic brain injury among female offenders in a prison population: results of the FleuryTBI study

“…Traumatic brain injury (TBI), which is one of the major causes of disability among working age adults (Fleminger & Ponsford, 2005) and represents a serious public health concern (Thurman, Alverson, Dunn, Guerrero, & Sniezek, 1999), has been identified in several studies as being strongly associated with offending (Farrer & Hedges, 2011; Shiroma, Ferguson, & Pickelsimer, 2010; Williams et al., 2010). Therefore, TBI should be part of the concerns when addressing the healthcare needs of the prison population.…”

Structural consequences of diffuse traumatic brain injury: A large deformation tensor-based morphometry study

“…Among the survivors, 80,000 to 90,000 individuals are left with significant long-term cognitive and motor disabilities (Jacobs, 1988;Max, Rice, & MacKenzie, 1990;McKinlay, Brooks, Bond, Martinage, & Marshall, 1981;Rutland-Brown, Langlois, Thomas, & Xi, 2006;Thomsen, 1984;Thurman, Alverson, Dunn, Guerrero, & Sniezek, 1999). However, efforts to identify the neuropathologic correlates of these deficits have gained only limited success to date (Bigler, 2001a;Levine et al, 2006).…”

An Autopsy Study of Pattern of Fatal Cranio-Cerebral Injuries Due to Blunt Force Trauma at Medicolegal Centre of A Tertiary Healthcare Centre

“…Most of the episodes of TBI in this older age group are attributed to falls and motor vehicle accidents in the studies of Thurman et al 30 . It has been reported that falls are the most common cause of TBI in older adults since approximately 10% of falls in older people result in injuries such as TBI as per Thompson et al 31 .…”