Researchers reported this week that headache is more frequent in persons suffering mild traumatic brain injury than after moderate to severe traumatic brain injury. The findings were announced this week at the 54th Annual Scientific Sessions of the American Headache Society. The researchers also found that headache prevalence was high in patients with mild traumatic brain injury, and remained significantly high for as long as one year after the injury according to Sylvia Lucas, MD, PhD, of the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle. “We have known that headache is the most common physical symptom after traumatic brain injury, but we wanted to study headache prospectively including whether severity of injury had an impact in prevalence.”
The patients studied had either mild traumatic brain injury or moderate to severe traumatic brain injury mainly caused by car accidents. Patients with mild injury were more likely to report new or worse headache than those people who had moderate to severe injury. “These findings should caution us to not underestimate seemingly milder head injuries and to take all brain trauma very seriously,” noted Dr. Lucas. She also added that recent CDC statistics have shown a dramatic rise in the number of emergency room visits for teens with sports-related concussion…… American Headache Society June 20, 2012