Research on Outcomes of Pediatric Traumatic Brain Injury: Current Advances and Future Directions

The articles in this series demonstrate the diversity of research approaches needed to enhance understanding of the sequelae of traumatic brain injury (TBI) in children. Methods ranged from assessment of information processing deficits to evaluation of the construct validity of cognitive tests, tracking of changes in academic achievement after injury, and measurement of behavior and social outcomes. Several articles considered multiple influences on sequelae, including TBI severity, age at injury, time since injury, and preinjury child characteristics. The findings provide new information on injury consequences and the cognitive correlates of postinjury problems in behavior, achievement, and discourse processing. Continued progress requires additional study of relations between specific forms of neuropathology and outcomes, more comprehensive assessments of environmental influences, and greater efforts to monitor postinjury developmental changes. Other needs include more probing assessments of the effects of TBI on daily functioning and social-emotional outcomes, investigation of the specificity of sequelae and of sources of variability in outcome, and application of models that examine mechanisms of effect. This research will benefit clinical practice, clarify processes underlying children's behavior and learning problems, and advance knowledge of normal development.     

Executive Function Profiles in Pediatric Traumatic Brain Injury

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) results in heterogeneous patterns of neuropsychological impairment. This study investigated heterogeneity in executive function (EF) using the Comprehensive Trail Making Test (CTMT) to evaluate 121 children and adolescents with TBI and 121 matched normal controls. The TBI group performed approximately two standard deviations below controls. Cluster analyses indicated that a three-cluster solution best classified the TBI group and a four-cluster solution best classified controls. Greater impairment in EF was associated with lower intellectual, achievement, and neuropsychological test performance in the TBI group. Results suggest that EF deficits reflected in CTMT performance may be useful for classifying severity of TBI.     

Metacognition Following Pediatric Traumatic Brain Injury: A Preliminary Study

Metacognition is one of the cognitive processes included under the general term executive functions. The executive functions are widely held to be under the control of the prefrontal cortex, an area often damaged after severe traumatic brain injury (TBI). We examined the metacognitive processing of a group of 9 children with TBI, and a group of 9 healthy, age-matched control children. Children with TBI showed significant impairments in their accuracy of prediction of the ease with which an item would be learned and their ability to predict recall of an item after a 2-hr delay. No significant differences in recall performance between the TBI and control groups were exhibited. The results are interpreted as suggesting an impairment in metacognitive processing resulting from frontal lobe damage after TBI in children. Additional research is necessary to confirm the relation of frontal lobe pathology and severity of injury to metacognitive impairments.     

Discourse Macrolevel Processing After Severe Pediatric Traumatic Brain Injury

The purpose of this study was to determine if discourse macrolevel processing abilities differed between children with severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) at least 2 years postinjury and typically developing children. Twenty-three children had sustained a severe TBI either before the age of 8 (n = 10) or after the age of 8 (n = 13). The remaining 32 children composed a control group of typically developing peers. The groups' summaries and interpretive lesson statements were analyzed according to reduction and transformation of narrative text information. Compared to the control group, the TBI group condensed the original text information to a similar extent. However, the TBI group produced significantly less transformed information during their summaries, especially those children who sustained early injuries. The TBI and control groups did not significantly differ in their production of interpretive lesson statements. In terms of related skills, discourse macrolevel summarization ability was significantly related to problem solving but not to lexical or sentence level language skills or memory. Children who sustain a severe TBI early in childhood are at an increased risk for persisting deficits in higher level discourse abilities, results that have implications for academic success and therapeutic practices.     

Discourse Macrolevel Processing After Severe Pediatric Traumatic Brain Injury

The purpose of this study was to determine if discourse macrolevel processing abilities differed between children with severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) at least 2 years postinjury and typically developing children. Twenty-three children had sustained a severe TBI either before the age of 8 (n = 10) or after the age of 8 (n = 13). The remaining 32 children composed a control group of typically developing peers. The groups' summaries and interpretive lesson statements were analyzed according to reduction and transformation of narrative text information. Compared to the control group, the TBI group condensed the original text information to a similar extent. However, the TBI group produced significantly less transformed information during their summaries, especially those children who sustained early injuries. The TBI and control groups did not significantly differ in their production of interpretive lesson statements. In terms of related skills, discourse macrolevel summarization ability was significantly related to problem solving but not to lexical or sentence level language skills or memory. Children who sustain a severe TBI early in childhood are at an increased risk for persisting deficits in higher level discourse abilities, results that have implications for academic success and therapeutic practices.     

Working Memory and New Learning Following Pediatric Traumatic Brain Injury

Working memory (WM), the ability to monitor, process and maintain task relevant information on-line to respond to immediate environmental demands, is controlled by frontal systems (D'Esposito et al., 2006 D'Esposito, M., Cooney, J. W., Gazzaley, A., Gibbs, S. E. and Postle, B. R. 2006. Is the prefrontal cortex necessary for delay task performance? Evidence from lesion and fMRI data.. Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 12: 248–260.  [Google Scholar]), which are particularly vulnerable to damage from a traumatic brain injury (TBI). This study employed the adult-based Working Memory model of Baddeley and Hitch (1974) Baddeley, A. D. and Hitch, G. 1974. “Working memory”. In The psychology of learning and motivation, Vol. VIII Edited by: Bower, G. H. 47–90. New York: Academic Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar] to examine the relationship between working memory function and new verbal learning in children with TBI. A cross-sectional sample of 36 school-aged children with a moderate to severe TBI was compared to age-matched healthy Controls on a series of tasks assessing working memory subsystems: the Phonological Loop (PL) and Central Executive (CE). The TBI group performed significantly more poorly than Controls on the PL measure and the majority of CE tasks. On new learning tasks, the TBI group consistently produced fewer words than Controls across the learning and delayed recall phases. Results revealed impaired PL function related to poor encoding and acquisition on a new verbal learning task in the TBI group. CE retrieval deficits in the TBI group contributed to general memory dysfunction in acquisition, retrieval and recognition memory. These results suggest that the nature of learning and memory deficits in children with TBI is related to working memory impairment.     

Prospective Memory in Pediatric Traumatic Brain Injury: A Preliminary Study

Prospective memory (PM) performance was investigated in a preliminary study of children and adolescents ages 10-19 in 3 groups: individuals with orthopedic injuries (not involving the head) requiring hospitalization (Ortho, N = 15), mild traumatic brain injury (TBI, N = 17), and severe TBI (N = 15). All participants with TBI were at least 5 years postinjury and participants in the Ortho group were at least 3 years postinjury. The PM task involved reporting words presented in blue during a category decision task in which words were presented in several different colors and participants were to determine which of two categories the word belonged. Participants were asked to make their choices as quickly as possible. After a 10- to 15-min intervening computer task in which all words were presented in black letters, a large proportion of participants with mild or severe TBI failed to indicate any blue words when they appeared. After a reminder to perform the PM task was given to all at the same point in the task, PM performance increased in the Ortho and Mild TBI groups, but remained comparably impaired in the Severe TBI group. Reaction time (RT) data indicated that mean RT was slower with increasing TBI severity. Further, there was a significant cost in RT for performing the PM task during the ongoing category decision task for all groups. The cost in terms of slowed RT increased with greater TBI severity.     

Prospective Memory in Pediatric Traumatic Brain Injury: A Preliminary Study

Prospective memory (PM) performance was investigated in a preliminary study of children and adolescents ages 10-19 in 3 groups: individuals with orthopedic injuries (not involving the head) requiring hospitalization (Ortho, N = 15), mild traumatic brain injury (TBI, N = 17), and severe TBI (N = 15). All participants with TBI were at least 5 years postinjury and participants in the Ortho group were at least 3 years postinjury. The PM task involved reporting words presented in blue during a category decision task in which words were presented in several different colors and participants were to determine which of two categories the word belonged. Participants were asked to make their choices as quickly as possible. After a 10- to 15-min intervening computer task in which all words were presented in black letters, a large proportion of participants with mild or severe TBI failed to indicate any blue words when they appeared. After a reminder to perform the PM task was given to all at the same point in the task, PM performance increased in the Ortho and Mild TBI groups, but remained comparably impaired in the Severe TBI group. Reaction time (RT) data indicated that mean RT was slower with increasing TBI severity. Further, there was a significant cost in RT for performing the PM task during the ongoing category decision task for all groups. The cost in terms of slowed RT increased with greater TBI severity.     

Recovery of Working Memory Following Pediatric Traumatic Brain Injury: A Longitudinal Analysis

In a prospective longitudinal study, the trajectory of verbal and visual-spatial working memory (WM) development was examined 2-, 6-, 12-, and 24-months following complicated-mild to severe pediatric traumatic brain injury (TBI; n = 55) relative to an orthopedic injury comparison group (n = 47). Individual growth curve modeling revealed an interaction of age, severity, and time for verbal, but not visual-spatial WM. The youngest children with severe TBI had the lowest scores and slowest verbal WM growth. WM outcome is best understood in light of age at injury and TBI severity. Findings support the early vulnerability hypothesis and highlight the need for long-term follow-up.     

Modeling of Longitudinal Academic Achievement Scores After Pediatric Traumatic Brain Injury

In a prospective longitudinal study, academic achievement scores were obtained from youth 5 to 15 years of age who sustained mild-moderate (n = 34) or severe (n = 43) traumatic brain injuries (TBI). Achievement scores were collected from baseline to 5 years following TBI and were subjected to individual growth curve analysis. The models fitted age at injury, years since injury, duration of impaired consciousness, and interaction effects to Reading Decoding, Reading Comprehension, Spelling, and Arithmetic standard scores. Although scores improved significantly over the follow-up relative to normative data from the standardization sample of the tests, children with severe TBI showed persistent deficits on all achievement scores in comparison to children with mild-moderate TBI. Interactions of the slope and age parameters for the Arithmetic and Reading Decoding scores indicated greater increases over time in achievement scores of the children injured at an older age, but deceleration in growth curves for the younger children with both mild-moderate and severe TBI. These results are compatible with the hypothesis that early brain injuries disrupt the acquisition of some academic skills. Hierarchical regression models revealed that indexes of academic achievement obtained 2 years following TBI had weak relations with the duration of impaired consciousness and socioeconomic status. In contrast, concurrent cognitive variables such as phonological processing and verbal memory accounted for more variability in academic scores. Given the significant and persistent decrement in basic academic skills in youth with severe TBI, it is clear that head-injured youth require intensive, long-term remediation and intervention not only of the academic skills themselves, but also of those cognitive abilities that support the development and maintenance of reading and math.     

Modeling of Longitudinal Academic Achievement Scores After Pediatric Traumatic Brain Injury

In a prospective longitudinal study, academic achievement scores were obtained from youth 5 to 15 years of age who sustained mild-moderate (n = 34) or severe (n = 43) traumatic brain injuries (TBI). Achievement scores were collected from baseline to 5 years following TBI and were subjected to individual growth curve analysis. The models fitted age at injury, years since injury, duration of impaired consciousness, and interaction effects to Reading Decoding, Reading Comprehension, Spelling, and Arithmetic standard scores. Although scores improved significantly over the follow-up relative to normative data from the standardization sample of the tests, children with severe TBI showed persistent deficits on all achievement scores in comparison to children with mild-moderate TBI. Interactions of the slope and age parameters for the Arithmetic and Reading Decoding scores indicated greater increases over time in achievement scores of the children injured at an older age, but deceleration in growth curves for the younger children with both mild-moderate and severe TBI. These results are compatible with the hypothesis that early brain injuries disrupt the acquisition of some academic skills. Hierarchical regression models revealed that indexes of academic achievement obtained 2 years following TBI had weak relations with the duration of impaired consciousness and socioeconomic status. In contrast, concurrent cognitive variables such as phonological processing and verbal memory accounted for more variability in academic scores. Given the significant and persistent decrement in basic academic skills in youth with severe TBI, it is clear that head-injured youth require intensive, long-term remediation and intervention not only of the academic skills themselves, but also of those cognitive abilities that support the development and maintenance of reading and math.     

创伤性脑损伤后骨折愈合加快的研究进展

目的：探讨创伤性脑损伤后骨折愈合加快的病理、生理机制。方法：在Pubmed、中国知网等数据库查阅有关颅脑损伤合并骨折后骨折愈合加快研究的文献,进行汇总分析。结果：创伤性脑损伤后,患者血液、局部组织中骨折愈合相关的细胞因子、神经肽、瘦素等表达升高,促进成骨作用,加速骨折愈合;而生长激素等体液激素的高表达、即刻基因的高表达、骨折端微动及组织异位骨化也是愈合加速的关键因素。结论：创伤性脑损伤后,骨折在体液、机械、细胞因子及其他相关因素等多方面因素影响下加速愈合,但其具体作用机制尚未明了,有待进一步研究。     

Future Directions for Research on Pediatric Chronic Disease Management: Lessons from Diabetes

Discussed conceptual and methodological issues related to researchon the management of pediatric chronic disease, focusing ondiabetes. The quality of studies in this area has improved,but several problems remain. Recommendations include greateruse of theory in planning studies; population-based samples;more sophisticated definitions of adherence; longitudinal designs;and analyses that control for demographic, developmental, andmedical variables. Most needed are prevention and interventionstudies that modify (rather than simply describe) contextual,behavioral, and psychological variables hypothesized to facilitateor impede adherence and adjustment. The questions asked anddesigns employed should match the state of knowledge regardingthe conceptual issue(s) being studied. It is often not possiblefor a given study to incorporate all of the recommendationsabove, but it is hoped that more research studies will movetoward these goals, and thereby enhance the contribution ofpediatric psychology to chronic disease management.     

Vasculitis: Current Status and Future Directions

Vasculitides represent such a heterogeneous group of disorders that difficulties arise in their classification. Although biopsy examination of involved tissues remains essential, new serological markers have been developed. Therapeutic strategies have been refined, and B lymphocyte-targeted drugs may prove a satisfactory alternative.     

血浆D-二聚体浓度与脑外伤预后的相关分析

目的：检测脑外伤患者血浆D-二聚体（D-D）浓度,揭示其对脑外伤预后的预测价值。方法：收集重型脑外伤患者86例和同期健康体检正常人50例。脑外伤患者静脉血在入院时获得。正常人静脉血体检时获得。ELISA检测血浆D-D浓度。统计分析其与预后的相关性。结果：脑外伤患者血浆D-D浓度（1.72±0.50）mg/L,显著高于正常人组（0.11±0.04）mg/L（P〈0.001）。多因素分析显示,血浆D-D浓度是脑外伤6个月死亡（OR=1.358,95%CI=1.118～1.807,P〈0.05）和神经功能预后不良（格拉斯哥预后评分1-3分）（OR=1.364,95%CI=1.123～1.882,P〈0.05）的独立危险因素。ROC曲线分析显示,血浆D-D浓度可显著预测脑外伤6个月死亡（曲线下面积=0.879,95%CI=0.829～0.936,P〈0.01）和神经功能预后不良（曲线下面积=0.890,95%CI=0.835～0.945,P〈0.01）。结论：脑外伤后血浆D-D浓度显著升高,临床检测这个指标有助于早期判断脑外伤患者的预后。     

HIV Testing: Current Practice and Future Directions

New approaches to expanding HIV testing and effective treatment and the wider availability of rapid testing technology have created new opportunities for achieving national and global HIV testing goals. In spite of HIV testing expansion in many settings, growing evidence of the prevention benefits of HIV testing, and the development of new, cost-effective approaches to HIV testing service provision, formidable obstacles to HIV testing expansion persist. Inequitable testing coverage exists within and across countries. While the proportion of people with HIV aware of their status is about 80 % in the U.S., the majority of HIV-infected persons in Africa are unaware of their status. Testing of most-at-risk populations, couples, children, and adolescents pose still unresolved policy and programmatic challenges. Future directions for HIV testing include rapid testing technology and detection of acute HIV infection, self-testing expansion, and partner notification. Expanded routine HIV screening and widespread testing is a public health imperative to reach national and international HIV prevention and treatment goals.     

Workflow Optimization: Current Trends and Future Directions

In an attempt to maximize productivity within the medical imaging department, increasing importance and attention is being placed on workflow. Workflow is the process of analyzing individual steps that occur during a single event, such as the performance of an MRI exam. The primary focus of workflow optimization within the imaging department is automation and task consolidation, however, a number of other factors should be considered including the stochastic nature of the workload, availability of human resources, and the specific technologies being employed. The purpose of this paper is to determine the complex relationship that exists between information technology and the radiologic technologist, in an attempt to determine how workflow can be optimized to improve technologist productivity. This relationship takes on greater importance as more imaging departments are undergoing the transition from film-based to filmless operation. A nationwide survey was conducted to compare technologist workflow in film-based and filmless operations, for all imaging modalities. The individual tasks performed by technologists were defined, along with the amount of time allocated to these tasks. The index of workflow efficiency was determined to be the percentage of overall technologist time allocated to image acquisition, since this is the primary responsibility of the radiologic technologist. Preliminary analysis indicates technologist workflow in filmless operation is enhanced when compared with film-based operation, for all imaging modalities. The specific tasks that require less technologist time in filmless operation are accessing data and retake rates (due to both technical factors and lost exams). Surprisingly, no significant differences were reported for the task of image processing, when comparing technologist workflow in film-based and filmless operations. Additional research is planned to evaluate the potential workflow gains achievable through workflow optimization software, improved systems integration, and automation of advanced image processing techniques.     

Executive Function Outcomes Following Traumatic Brain Injury in Young Children: A Five Year Follow-Up

Little is known about the long-term effects of traumatic brain injury (TBI) in very young children. This study used a prospective, cross-sectional design to investigate the impact of TBI on executive function (EF) outcomes in children who sustained a TBI before the age of seven. The study aimed to identify specific or global EF deficits five years post-TBI, and to explore factors that predicted outcomes. Fifty-four children with a TBI and 17 uninjured comparison children participated. Their performance on several cognitive and behavioral EF measures was examined. Results suggested that executive difficulties were present following severe TBI, however children with mild and moderate injuries were relatively unaffected. Skills that develop early appeared to be relatively robust. Injury severity was found to be most predictive of long-term EF, however other injury, child and family-related variables also contributed to outcomes.     

颅脑创伤镇痛镇静的研究

颅脑创伤是临床常见外伤,患者均伴有明显的疼痛、躁动及应激反应,导致心率过速、血压升高、颅内压上升等,增加再出血及误伤等风险,不利于治疗的进行。镇痛镇静可减轻患者疼痛程度及应激反应,并达到保护脑组织、促进治疗顺利进行的作用。本研究就颅脑创伤所导致的病理改变、镇痛和镇静的必要性、常用镇痛和镇静药物及相关争论进行综述,旨在为颅脑创伤的治疗提供参考。