Strengthening the Evidence Base: Recommendations for Future Research Identified Through the Development of CDC's Pediatric Mild TBI Guideline.
Stacy J Suskauer, Keith Owen Yeates, Kelly Sarmiento and 7 others
PMID 30608306WHAT IT FOUND
Pediatric mTBI evidence was limited by small samples, missing controls, unclear criteria, and narrow settings.
Future research needs broader samples, controls, common measures, and full reporting.
Key findings
01The guideline systematic review included datasets from 66 studies after full-text review of over 2900 articles selected from more than 37 000 abstracts.
02Evidence limitations included small sample sizes, exclusion of control groups, unclear inclusion or exclusion criteria, unrepresentative samples, and failure to separate findings by age and mTBI severity.
03Future research should recruit from varied healthcare and school settings and study non-sports injury mechanisms; 30% to 50% of children treated for mTBI in healthcare settings sustain injuries through other mechanisms.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they found
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What it does not show
It does not report patient outcomes or tested treatments. It describes guideline development and research gaps, not clinical recommendations for managing children with mTBI. It does not present individual study results or effect estimates.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read this as clinical guidance for treating a child with mTBI. It reports guideline-development limitations and recommendations for future research, not tested treatments or patient outcomes.