Etiology of traumatic brain injury: Characterization of differential outcomes up to 1 year postinjury

Objective: To characterize outcomes after traumatic brain injury (TBI) resulting from vehicular crashes, violence, falls, or other causes. Design: Prospective, multicenter, longitudinal. Setting: Seventeen Traumatic Brain Injury Model Systems. Participants: A total of 1170 individuals with moderate to severe TBI with data from initial medical and rehabilitation stays and 1-year follow-up. Interventions: Not applicable. Main Outcome Measures: At rehabilitation discharge, FIMTM instrument, Disability Rating Scale (DRS), and Rancho Los Amigo Levels of Cognitive Functioning Scale. At 1 year postinjury, FIM, DRS, Community Integration Questionnaire (CIQ), employment, residence, marital status, and seizure occurrence. Results: The 4 etiology groups could be distinguished based on premorbid characteristics. Severity of injury indices indicated that individuals in vehicular crashes showed a trend toward incurring more severe injuries than the other 3 groups. At rehabilitation discharge, there were no functional differences between groups. At 1 year postinjury, the groups could be differentiated: individuals in violence-related TBI had higher unemployment rates and lower CIQ scores; persons in vehicular crashes reported the best functional and psychosocial outcomes; and individuals in the falls and other groups had outcomes lying between the vehicular and violence groups. Conclusion: This study elucidated important differences between persons with violence-related TBI and those with non-violence-related TBI. Further research is needed to find effective interventions to address these differences.