People with brain injuries likely to develop attention problems

New Delhi: A new research suggests that people having brain injuries are more likely to develop attention problems.

The research further says that people with severe injuries are five times more likely to develop attention problems while people with mild injuries are two times more likely to develop.

Researchers from Cincinnati Children`s Hospital Medical Center in the US presented the study at annual meeting of the Association of Academic Physiatrists in Las Vegas.

The findings indicated that parenting and home environment exert a powerful influence on recovery of these attention problems.Certain skills that can affect social functioning, such as speed of information processing, inhibition and reasoning, show greater long-term effects.

Children with severe Traumatic brain injury (TBI) in optimal environments may show few effects of their injuries while children with milder injuries from disadvantaged or chaotic homes often demonstrate persistent problems.

Many children do very well in long-term after brain injury and most do not have across the board deficits.

The team is working to identify genes important to recovery after TBI and understand how these genes may interact with environmental factors to influence recovery.

They will be collecting salivary DNA samples from more than 330 children participating in the Approaches and Decisions in Acute Pediatric TBI Trial.

They assessed children at three, six and 12 months post injury, and secondary outcomes will include a comprehensive assessment of cognitive and behavioural functioning at 12 months post injury.

(With ANI inputs)