Final Validation of the Quality of Life after Brain Injury for Children and Adolescents (QOLIBRI-KID/ADO) Questionnaire.

Until recently, no disease-specific health-related quality of life (HRQoL) questionnaire existed for pediatric traumatic brain injuries (TBIs). In this revalidation study, the psychometric properties and the validity of the 35-item QOLIBRI-KID/ADO questionnaire in its final German version were examined in 300 children and adolescents. It is the first self-reported TBI-specific tool for measuring pediatric HRQoL in individuals aged between 8 and 17 years. The six-factor model fits the data adequately. The questionnaire's internal consistency was excellent for the total score and satisfactory to excellent for the scale scores. Intraclass correlations indicated good test-retest reliability, and the measure's construct validity was supported by the overlap between the QOLBRI-KID/ADO and the PedsQL, which measures generic HRQoL. The discriminant validity tests showed that older children and girls reported a significantly lower HRQoL than comparison groups, and this was also true of children who were anxious or depressed, or who suffered from post-concussion symptoms, replicating the results of the questionnaire's first developmental study. Our results suggest that the QOLIBRI-KID/ADO is a reliable and valid multidimensional tool that can be used together with the adult version in clinical contexts and research to measure disease-specific HRQoL after pediatric TBI throughout a person's life. This may help improve care, treatment, daily functioning, and HRQoL after TBI.

Detection of Traumatic and Postoperative Nerve Lesions following Upper Extremity Fractures in a Pediatric Cohort Using MR Neurography.

INTRODUCTION: Fractures of the upper extremity are common traumatic injuries in children. Nerve lesions are a rare but typical complication of these fractures. Additional to physical, electrophysiological, and sonographic examinations, magnetic resonance neurography (MRN) can be used to assess the degree and exact localization of nerve damage. This retrospective study was conducted to evaluate the potential role of this examination technique for children and to test a proposed MRN classification of traumatic nerve injury according to Chhabra in a pediatric cohort. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Pediatric patients undergoing MRN for traumatic nerve injury from January 2016 to December 2020 were retrospectively identified. A total of 12 consecutive patients with sufficient clinical data, an MRN, and if available follow-up examination were enrolled and analyzed. RESULTS: In 10 of 12 cases one or more nerve lesions could be identified by MRN using the classification proposed by Chhabra et al. MRN was used to assess nerve injuries, imaging results were compared with clinical course. Clinical follow-up examinations of 10 patients showed an overall good clinical recovery, even in one case with severe trauma and nerve surgery. CONCLUSION: MRN as a noninvasive procedure can help in the evaluation of nerve injury, especially for the identification of lower grade nerve damage and to objectify suspected nerve damage in case of uncertain clinical examination results; thus, can help in decision making whether surgical revision or conservative treatment is preferable.