Traumatic brain injury (TBI) can be a extraordinarily difficult condition to rebound from. And now there’s a report that a lot more people may be suffering from TBI than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates.
Researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., are the one who have raised the issue of TBI being under-reported, according to a story in Science Business.
http://sciencebusiness.technewslit.com/?p=8233
The Mayo researchers, using their own new method to classify head injuries, did its own sample and found that TBIs occur in as many as 558 per 100,000 people, according to Science Business. That’s significantly higher than the CDC’s estimate, which is 341 TBIs per 100,000 people.
“The findings indicate that 60 percent of injuries fell outside the standard categorization used by the CDC, even though two-thirds (66 percent) of the cases reported symptoms, such as dizziness or nausea,” Science Business wrote. “The results also show the elderly and the young were most at risk for TBI, respectively, and men were more at risk than women.”
Why the difference in the Mayo and CDC TBI figures?
The Mayo researchers classified head injuries using a new yardstick, the Mayo Traumatic Brain Injury Classification System. To gauge potential TBIs, this new measure takes into account symptoms such as complaints of nausea and dizziness, and whether a patient lost consciousness, to put patients in categories of “definite/probable/possible/no” for TBI, according to Science Business.
The bottom line is that TBI may be even more prevalent than we believe.
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