Abstracts / Injury, Int. J. Care Injured 40S (2009) S1–S26S4

ORAL–INVITED

BREAKOUT 2-3

Personal impact of neurotrauma

M. Parker

Milly Parker was a front seat passenger in a car that ran off theroad in 1992. Aged 21, Milly was left with many injuries, includingbrain injury. Milly was unable to return to study, as her disabilitymeans she has trouble learning and retaining new information. Foryears she suffered migraines and today she still continues to suffermigraines and depression. Milly Parker is now a young, self-employed woman with strong ties to Acquired Brian InjuryNetworks. Ms Parker is also the 2008 Ambassador for InternationalDay for People with a Disability, was member of the TAC DisabilityAdvisory Committee and is currently a Member of the VictorianDisability Advisory Council.

doi: 10.1016/j.injury.2009.01.031

ORAL–INVITED

BREAKOUT 2-4

Long-term outcomes of patients with traumatic brain injury

J. Ponsford 1,2,3

1 School of Psychology, Psychiatry and Psychological Medicine,

Monash University, Clayton, VIC 3800, Australia2 Monash-Epworth Rehabilitation Research Centre, Richmond, VIC

3121, Australia3 National Trauma Research Institute, Melbourne, VIC 3004, Australia

Whilst there have now been numerous studies documentingoutcome in the first couple of years after traumatic brain injury(TBI), few studies have focussed on longer term outcomes overperiods of 10 years or more. Examination of such outcomes isimportant given the relative youth of those injured. The aim of thisstudy was to investigate functional and psychosocial outcome 10years after mild-severe TBI and its association with demographicfactors, including age, education and gender, injury severity, andconcurrent cognitive and psychiatric functioning. Findings indi-cated a broad range of outcomes, from lower severe disability togood recovery. Significant cognitive impairments in the domains ofattention, processing speed, memory and executive function werestill evident. Participants showing poorer functional outcome hadsignificantly longer PTA duration, less education, performed morepoorly on cognitive measures of information processing speed,attention, memory and executive function and showed higherlevels of anxiety on the HADS. Logistic regression revealed HADSanxiety and Digit Symbol Coding performances were the mostsignificant predictors of GOSE outcome category, with the model,yielding an overall classification accuracy of 82.1%. It is apparentthat PTA duration remains a strong outcome predictor even manyyears after injury and that residual cognitive and psychiatricproblems are most strongly associated with continuing disability.Such problems need to be addressed if outcomes are to beimproved.

doi: 10.1016/j.injury.2009.01.032

ORAL-INVITED

BREAKOUT 2-5

Psychosocial outcomes following minor traumatic brain injury

M. O’Donnell

Australian Centre for Posttraumatic Mental Health, Heidelberg, VIC

3081, Australia

Background: A significant minority of MTBI patients have poorrecovery outcomes. Understanding the factors that increasevulnerability to poor recovery has important implication forplanning clinical care.

Methods: 490 patients with a MTBI and 622 trauma controls(without MTBI) were randomly selected to the study duringhospital admission to 5 level 1 trauma centres around Australia.They were assessed during their hospital admission and followed-up at 12 months. The presence of psychiatric disorders wasassessed using structured clinical interviews. Disability wasassessed using a self-report measure.

Results: 12 months after injury, 29% of MTBI patients and 26% oftrauma controls had developed a psychiatric disorder that was notpresent at the time of the injury. The most common psychiatricdisorders in the MTBI group were depression, generalized anxietydisorder, and posttraumatic stress disorder. After controlling forbaseline variables, MTBI patients were more likely to developposttraumatic stress disorder than trauma controls (OR: 2.03, 95%CI: 1.00-4.12). After controlling for baseline variables MTBIpatients were also more likely to have high levels of disabilityat 12 months (OR: 1.89, 95% CI: 1.11-3.61). This effect however,was lost when 3 month anxiety and depression was considered.

Conclusions: Traumatic injury, both with and without a MTBI, isassociated with the development of a range of psychiatricdisorders. MTBI increases the risk for PTSD but not any otherpsychiatric disorder. MTBI is associated with increased disability at12 months but this is mainly due to ongoing anxiety anddepression problems.

doi: 10.1016/j.injury.2009.01.033

ORAL

BREAKOUT 3-1

3-Month cognitive outcome in older adults with traumatic braininjury

E. March 1,*, G. Kinsella 1,2, B. Ong 1, J. Olver 3

1 Psychological Science, La Trobe University, Bundoora, VIC 3086,

Australia2 Psychology, Caulfield General Medical Centre, Caulfield, VIC 3162,

Australia3 Epworth Rehabilitation Centre, Richmond, VIC 3121, Australia*Corresponding author.

Cognitive difficulties following traumatic brain injury (TBI) canresult in below optimum everyday functioning. Our broader VNIproject examines the cognitive outcomes of TBI in the older adultpopulation with a view to ascertaining if cognitive recovery inolder adults is similar to that observed in young adults. In thispaper, we present some of the preliminary findings from our studyfocusing on the 3-month outcome data. We present data from 29patients with mild to moderate traumatic brain injury (TBI), 29control patients with orthopaedic injuries (OIC) and 29 healthycommunity controls, over the age of 65 years old. We address the