Scientists uncover new long-term association between the two

Jan 16, 2014 13:52 GMT  ·  By

A group of investigators with the Department of Psychiatry at the Oxford University argues in a new study that people who suffer traumatic brain injuries (TBI) are no less than 300 percent more likely to die prematurely than peers who have not suffered such blows. 

Most often, patients die due to fatal injuries or suicides, the research team argues. The effect can only be seen in time, and is not immediately apparent at short time scales. For the purposes of this study, TBI were defined as injuries that lead to internal bleeding or skull fractures.

Loss of consciousness following the blow was also cataloged as a risk factor, as were all possible combinations of the three types of accidents. Concussions were only classified as mild TBI, and covered by the researchers separately, Medical Xpress reports.

The large-scale investigation covered the cases of 218,300 people who had suffered from TBI, some 150,513 siblings of TBI patients, as well as 2 million control cases. The data were collected from Swedish medical records, and cover a total of 41 years.

Experts from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm were also a part of the investigation. Details of the investigation appear in the latest issue of the journal JAMA Psychiatry. This study is important because nearly 1.7 million people in the United States, and 1 million in the United Kingdom, are hospitalized with TBI diagnostics every year.

“We found that people who survive six months after TBI remain three times more likely to die prematurely than the control population and 2.6 times more likely to die than unaffected siblings,” explains Oxfird Wellcome trust senior research fellow, Dr. Seena Fazel.

“Looking at siblings who did not suffer TBIs allows us to control for genetic factors and early upbringing, so it is striking to see that the effect remains strong even after controlling for these,” adds the expert, who was also the leader of the new study. The term premature death was used to denote people who passed away before the age of 56.

“TBI survivors are more than twice as likely to kill themselves as unaffected siblings, many of whom were diagnosed with psychiatric disorders after their TBI,” Fazel goes on to say.

The expert adds that existing guidelines for hospital care do not recommend assessments of mental health or suicide risks in TBI patients. Most of these guidelines center on short-term survival prospects, since the injuries themselves are life-threatening.

“TBI survivors should be monitored carefully for signs of depression, substance abuse and other psychiatric disorders, which are all treatable conditions,” Fazel concludes.