Cognitive Deficits
Most patients with severe TBI who recover consciousness suffer from cognitive disabilities, including the loss of many higher-level mental skills. Cognitive deficits that can follow TBI include impaired attention; disrupted insight, judgement, and thought; reduced processing speed; distractibility; and deficits in executive functions such as abstract reasoning, planning, problem-solving, and multitasking. Memory loss, the most common cognitive impairment among head-injured people, occurs in 20–79% of people with closed head trauma, depending on severity. Post-traumatic amnesia (PTA), a confusional state with impaired memory, is characterized by loss of specific memories or the partial inability to form or store new ones.
Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a progressive, neurodegenerative disease characterized by dementia, memory loss, and deteriorating cognitive abilities. Research suggests an association between head injury in early adulthood and the development of AD later in life; the more severe the head injury, the greater the risk of developing AD. Some evidence indicates that a head injury may interact with other factors to trigger the disease and may hasten the onset of the disease in individuals already at risk. For example, head-injured people who have a particular form of the protein apolipoprotein E (apoE4, a naturally occurring protein that helps transport cholesterol through the bloodstream) fall into this increased risk category.
Patients with moderate to severe TBI have more problems with cognitive deficits than do those with mild TBI, but several mild TBIs may have an additive effect. About one in five career boxers is affected by chronic traumatic brain injury (CTBI), which causes cognitive, behavioral, and physical impairments. Dementia pugilistica, also called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, is the severe form of CTBI. Caused by repetitive blows to the head over a long period, the condition primarily affects career boxers. It commonly manifests as dementia, or declining mental ability, memory problems, and parkinsonism (tremors and lack of coordination). Symptoms begin anywhere between 6 and 40 years after the start of a boxing career, with an average onset of about 16 years.
Read more about this topic: Complications Of Traumatic Brain Injury
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