Age effects on long-term neuropsychological outcome in paediatric traumatic brain injury

In order to investigate the relationship between age at injury and long-ter m neuropsychological impairment, 29 children and adolescents who sustained traumatic brain injury (TBI) were studied at least 6 years post-trauma. Tes ts of intellectual, memory, visuospatial and frontal lobe functions were ad ministered to patients and 29 normal matched control subjects. Correlations between performance on neuropsychological tests and age showed the followi ng direction: the younger the child when TBI was sustained, the worse the c ognitive outcome. After controlling for injury severity, visuospatial funct ions remained related to age. Patients' performance differed significantly from chat of controls in half of the neuropsychological variables analysed. To further investigate the effects of age at injury, the sample was divide d in two groups (TBI before and after age of 8) and then compared with thei r respective controls. Patients damaged earlier presented impaired intellec tual and visuospatial functions. The results suggest that neuropsychologica l sequelae remain after at lease 6 years of evolution, and that there is an age at injury effect.