I have often written about the increased risk that individuals who have sustained a traumatic brain injury for suffering further neurologic injury, disease or disorder. A new study published in JAMA Neurology once again highlights the increased risk among individuals who have sustained a traumatic brain injury. The study is entitled, “Head Injury and Long-term Mortality Risk in Community-Dwelling Adults” and is published in JAMA Neurology.

The objective of the study was to “evaluate the association of head injury with long-term all-cause mortality risk among community-dwelling adults with consideration of head injury frequency and severity.” The study included 13,037 participants, aged 45 to 65 years, from four U.S. communities in the northwestern suburbs of Minneapolis, Minnesota; Forsyth County, North Carolina; Jackson, Mississippi; and Washington County, Maryland. The study included individuals who had sustained mild, moderate and severe traumatic brain injury. Overall, the researchers found an approximately two-fold increase in all-cause mortality risk associated with brain injury. The researchers noted, “importantly, our results revealed that all-cause mortality risk remains increased with mild head injury compared with no head injury, which should motivate ongoing consideration of TBI frequency and severity (including mild TBI) as determinants of subsequent morbidity and mortality.”

The study concluded, “this study reports an approximately two-fold increase in long-term mortality risk associated with head injury (identified by both self-report and hospital diagnosis) in a diverse cohort of U.S. adults followed for 30 years.”

The citation for the study is : Head Injury and All-Cause Mortality in Community-Dwelling Adults. Holly Elser, Rebecca Gottesman, Alexa Walter, Josef Coresh, Ramon Diaz-Arrastia, Thomas Mosley, Andrea Schneider Neurology May 2022, 98 (18 Supplement) 597