Data Mining to Understand How Health Status Preceding Traumatic Brain Injury Affects Functional Outcome: A Population-Based Sex-Stratified Study.
Vincy Chan, Mitchell Sutton, Tatyana Mollayeva and 3 others
PMID 32544398WHAT IT FOUND
10 pre-injury health condition groups were linked to lower relative functional gain in men after TBI; in women, one factor showed this link.
Key findings
01In men, 10 pre-injury health status factors were associated with reduced relative functional gain, including Alzheimer’s disease and dementia at 16.8%.
02In women, one pre-injury factor, disorders of elderly and medical issues, was associated with reduced relative functional gain: 4.7% lower gain.
03Relative functional gain was 52.8±27.6% for males and 51.6±27.1% for females.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTs
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What it does not show
The study used administrative data, so it lacked information on race/ethnicity and marital status. There is no agreed case definition for TBI across the lifespan; the study used ICD-10 codes that prior work has used. The 43 separate models did not account for patients having several pre-injury health status factors at the same time. With a large sample, p-values can be affected, so confidence intervals matter. The outcome was total FIM, combining motor and cognitive items, so it does not show which part of function was affected. The Discussion notes fewer female than male patients (N=2,215 vs. N=3,677), which may affect sex-specific findings. The study was observational and did not test whether managing these conditions changes rehabilitation gain.
Declared interests
No author conflict-of-interest statement appears in the supplied text. The article is marked as supported by NIH extramural and non-U.S. government research funding.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read these percentages as treatment effects. The study observed associations between pre-injury health status groups and relative functional gain. It did not test whether managing a condition changes outcome.