Executive function in patients with mild traumatic brain injury / 中国神经精神疾病杂志

Background Patients often suffer from a few complications of neurological and psychiatric problems after traumatic brain injury including damage of cognition, mental disorders and behavior problems. Damage of cognition is a common sequela in traumatic brain injury. Numerous researchers were focus on the cognition changes of patients with mild brain injury. But their conclusions are debatable. Executive function is one of the important components of cognition. In this study,we tried to find out the executive functional alterations of the patients with mild brain injury.Methods 159 patients with brain injury caused by transportation events and 68 normal controls were assessed executive function. The executive function tests included the block design in WAIS, the Stroop test, the verbal fluency and the modified version of Wisconsin card sorting test (M-WCST). These tests were applied to compare the scores of traumatic brain injury patients with various severities including mild, moderate, and severe and with different CT/MRI results.Results Patients with mild head injury got significantly lower scores on all tests than normal controls ( P＜0.01 ). But there was no significant difference between mild and moderate brain injury group. Except Stroop test and WCST categories, patients with mild brain injury got significantly lower scores on all other tests than those with severe brain injury ( P ＜0.05). In the brain injury cases with damage signs on CT/MRI, there was no significant difference on scores of all tests except block design tests among brain injury patients with various severities. Among the brain injury cases without any damage signs on CT/MRI, there was no significant difference on scores of all tests among brain injury patients with various severities. The correlation analysis showed that scores of block design and verbal fluency test were negatively related to the severity of brain injury( P＜0.05). The age and the education level of the patients had negative and positive correlation, respectively, to executive function.Conclusions The executive function of patients with mild brain injury was impaired when the medication was terminated. We should pay more attention to patients with mild brain injury by performing various tests for assessment of disability.

Clinical analysis on intelligence and memory impairment of patients with brain injury during traffic accident / 中国法医学杂志

Objective To study the intelligence and memory impairment of patients with craniocerebral injury during traffic accident and its correlated factors. Method Data of psychological tests, eletroencepa-lograph (EEG) and brain image information of 652 subjects with brain injury who survived from traffic accident in Chengdu from Jan. 1,1999 to Dec. 31,2001 were collected and analysed. Results The average intelligence quotient (IQ) of patients in patients group was 77.85?15.97. 27.9 % patients's IQ was lower than 70. 51.9% patients's memory quotient (MQ) was lower than 51. The intelligence impairment was correlated with education level, left temporal lobe injury, three or more lobes of the brain injuried and EEG abnormality. Memory impairment was correlated with education level, interval between injury and e-valuation, brain stem injury, left temporal lobe injury, and EEG abnormality. Conclusion Impairment of intelligence and memory in different degrees were observed in most patients with traumatic brain injury during traffic accident. Intelligence and memory impairment were correlated with left temporal lobe injury, EEG abnormality, brain stem injury and education level.