@article{ref1,
title="Analysis of US Veterans Health Administration comprehensive evaluations for traumatic brain injury in Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom Veterans",
journal="Brain injury",
year="2012",
author="Scholten, Joel D. and Sayer, Nina A. and Vanderploeg, Rodney D. and Bidelspach, Douglas E. and Cifu, David X.",
volume="26",
number="10",
pages="1177-1184",
abstract="Objective: To describe neurobehavioural symptoms in Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans evaluated for traumatic brain injury (TBI) through the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) TBI screening and evaluation programme. Design: An observational study based on VHA administrative data for all veterans who underwent TBI Comprehensive Evaluation between October 2007 and June 2010. Results: 55,070 predominantly white, non-Hispanic, male Veterans with a positive TBI screen had comprehensive TBI evaluations completed during the study period. Moderate-to-severe symptoms were common in the entire sample, both in those with and without a clinician-diagnosed TBI. However, the odds of reporting symptoms of this severity were significantly higher in those diagnosed with TBI compared to those without a TBI diagnosis, with odds ratios ranging from 1.35-2.21. TBI-specialty clinicians believed that in the majority of diagnosed TBI cases both behavioural health conditions and TBI contributed to patients' symptom presentation. Conclusions: The VHAs TBI screening and evaluation process is identifying individuals with ongoing neurobehavioural symptoms. Moderate-to-severe symptoms were more prevalent in veterans with TBI-specialty clinician determined TBI. However, the high rate of symptom reporting also present in individuals without a confirmed TBI suggest that symptom aetiology may be multi-factorial in nature.<p /> <p>Language: en</p>",
language="en",
issn="0269-9052",
doi="10.3109/02699052.2012.661914",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.3109/02699052.2012.661914"
}