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Abstract
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We commend Furlan et al1 on their excellent scoping review assessing clinical trials on mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) and concussion listed on the database ClinicalTrials.gov. Their study demonstrated that out of 320 registered trials, 73.1% did not provide a definition of mTBI/concussion,1 which is as much concerning as the fact that the remaining studies provided 109 different definitions.
Obviously, such a wide variation limits the generalizability of the conclusions reached by each trial, and testifies the existing confusion around the most common form of TBI worldwide.1 These issues have to be tackled by the entire neurotrauma community for two reasons: the first is the growing interest toward mTBI and the second is that a common language could indeed bring remarkable advantages to us all.
The growing research interest toward mTBI/concussion is certainly demonstrated by the fact that during the period 2000 to 2019 (investigated by Furlan et al1), the number of protocols registered on ClinicalTrials.gov kept growing at a rate of 16.8 studies/yr, whereas this figure increased to 34.3 studies/yr over the last 3 yr. The advantages of a common language can also be easily predicted both in terms of fairer allocations of funding and in terms of dissemination of the results. In neurosurgery, a good example of the benefits brought in by the introduction of an overarching term to solve a conundrum of coexistent and overlapping pathological conditions is offered by the acronym "DCM"--degenerative cervical myelopathy--recently coined to group all degenerative causes of compression of the cervical spinal cord.2 This approach not only overcame the abundance of different terms used by the International Classification of Disease (ICD), and different literature database codes for the Medical Subject Heading (MeSH), but also made it easier to raise awareness and understand the natural history and biological basis of that spinal condition,3 along with highlighting all aspects of the condition that could indeed be considered top research priorities in the mTBI field...
Language: en |