Mild Traumatic Brain Injury: What is it and What Does it Do to the Sufferer?

Mild traumatic brain injury (MTBI) is the brain injury that is often overlooked and misdiagnosed. The simple facts that it is invisible, it is mild and it does present in a variety of manifestations cause it to be overlooked. But, saying that a brain injury is mild is not the same as saying it is insignificant. Many sufferers of MTBI usually find themselves disabled in at least one way and unable to return to the lives they were used to living, the lives they had hopes and dreams in store for.

What is MTBI? MTBI is defined as an impact that causes the brain tissue to strike against the bony structure of the skull. This can occur through a sports accident, a serious fall, or an automobile accident. The brain strikes the skull first on the side opposite the impact and then strikes the skull a second time on the side of the impact. Depending on the force of the impact, this action of opposing strikes can be repeated several or many times over. An injury with two opposing and well defined areas of injury is a "contrecoup" type of brain injury. One that is the result of greater force and a greater number of strikes causing multiple areas of injury is a "diffuse" type of brain injury. It is more complex and extensive than the contrecoup type because adjoining nerve cells are torn apart from each other. According to The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) diffuse injuries, which involve many symptom pathways, are the most common because the brain ricochets after an impact. You can locate animations and graphics that illustrate these two types at The CNS (Center for Neuro Skills) Store: http://www.neuroskills.com/cgi-bin/store/CNSstore.cgi?.

The national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recently reported that it estimates that between 1.4 million and 3.8 million people suffer MTBI every year. They now say that loss of memory instead of the occurrence of unconsciousness is the diagnostic predictor of MTBI. Of course, closed impact brain injury will have various consequences for various people, which is one of the reasons it is so easy to overlook. The overall health and age of the impact victim are two determining factors of how severe a MTBI will be and how well or how soon the victim will recover.

What does MTBI do to the sufferers? There are two stages of symptom assault: the symptoms following the impact and the symptoms which remain after one year's time, which are then classified as long-term disabilities. Immediately following an impact the sufferer of MTBI may experience any or all of such symptoms as these, which are listed by the CDC: headaches, visual disturbance, memory loss, poor attention and/or concentration, sleep disturbance, dizziness, loss of balance, irritability, emotional disturbance, sensitivity to light and sound, mood changes, getting lost or being confused, slowness in thinking.

Moderate to severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) has these kinds of symptoms as well, plus others, like prolonged unconsciousness, seizures, convulsions, and slurred speech. It is easy to see that these latter two categories of TBI can not be overlooked by family and medical practitioners, while MTBI can be and often is completely overlooked.

It is frequently the case with MTBI that over a period of time the suffer or the family or friends of the sufferer notice long-lasting changes in ability or behavior. It is often only then that medical advise and help is sought. This is particularly unfortunate because the CDC states that when MTBI is correctly diagnosed and properly treated most sufferers recover fully, although 15% of these still have long-term disabling problems from MTBI. These disabling problems, as stated by the CDC, are a list of things that are an extension of the initial trauma symptoms and it includes: difficulties with cognition, logic and reasoning, memory, sight, hearing, touch, communication, personality changes, and depression. For example, an individual may have a profound sensitivity to sound and flashing lights and experience vertigo. Another example is that the sufferer may have an impairment of their sense of humor or difficulty with cognitive tasks within their field of expertise.

It is important to recognize that the CDC states that MRI and CT scans may look normal in instances of MTBI even though an injury is present. The sufferer whose diagnostic tests look normal may be experiencing any or all of the symptoms of diagnosed MTBI including: headache, thinking difficulty, memory and attention problems, mood swings and uncontrollable, frustration and depression. A proportion of those who are not diagnosed with and hospitalized for MTBI have the same kinds of long-term problems as the 15% of those who don't recover in spite of proper care and treatment. Some of these long-term problems, as listed by the CDC, are: confusion, pain, cognitive problems, memory problems, mood and personality changes, sensory problems such as with vision and/or hearing, and these last two would fall in the category of post-concussion syndrome.

The ray of hope on the horizon of MTBI is that with proper diagnosis, treatment and therapy 85% of MTBI sufferers recover full health and function. Be informed and don't be one of the unfortunate ones whose MTBI gets overlooked or misdiagnosed. To quote a statement published by the CDC, "These injuries are commonly overlooked. Even though this type of TBI is called "mild", the effect on the family and the injured person can be devastating."