TY - JOUR PY - 2021// TI - Trajectories of fatigue, psychological distress and coping styles after mild traumatic brain injury: a six-month prospective cohort study JO - Archives of physical medicine and rehabilitation A1 - Rakers, Sandra E. A1 - Timmerman, Marieke E. A1 - Scheenen, Myrthe E. A1 - de Koning, Myrthe E. A1 - van der Horn, Harm J. A1 - van der Naalt, Joukje A1 - Spikman, Jacoba M. SP - ePub EP - ePub VL - ePub IS - ePub N2 - OBJECTIVE: To analyse fatigue after mild traumatic brain injury (TBI) with latent class growth analysis (LCGA) to determine distinct recovery trajectories and investigate influencing factors, including emotional distress and coping styles.

DESIGN: An observational cohort study design with validated questionnaires assessing fatigue, anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress and coping at 2 weeks, 3 and 6 months post-injury. SETTING: Three level-1 trauma-centers. PARTICIPANTS: Mild TBI patients (n=456). INTERVENTIONS: Not applicable. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Fatigue was measured with the fatigue severity subscale of the Checklist Individual Strength, including 8 items (sum scores 8-56). Subsequently, three clinical categories were created: high (40-56), moderate (26-38) and low (8-25).

RESULTS: From the entire mild TBI group, four patient clusters with distinct patterns for fatigue, emotional distress and coping styles were found with LCGA. Clusters 1 and 2 showed favourable recovery from fatigue over time, with low emotional distress and the predominant use of active coping in cluster 1 (30%), and low emotional distress and decreasing passive coping in cluster 2 (25%). Clusters 3 and 4 showed unfavourable recovery, with persistent high fatigue and increasing passive coping together with low emotional distress in cluster 3 (27%), and high emotional distress in cluster 4 (18%). Patients with adverse trajectories were more often female, suffering more often from sleep disturbances and pain.

CONCLUSION: The prognosis for recovery from posttraumatic fatigue is favourable for 55% of the mild TBI patients. Patients at risk for chronic fatigue can be signalled in the acute phase post-injury based on the presence of high fatigue, high passive coping and, for a subgroup of patients, high emotional distress. LCGA proved to be a highly valuable and multipurpose statistical method to map distinct courses of disease-related processes over time.

Language: en

LA - en SN - 0003-9993 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.apmr.2021.06.004 ID - ref1 ER -