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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Neurol.
Sec. Neurotrauma
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fneur.2024.1397625
This article is part of the Research Topic Assessment and Treatment Interventions for Traumatic Brain Injury View all 12 articles

Extended Tests for Evaluating Post-Traumatic Brain Injury Deficits in Resource-limited Settings: Methods and Pilot Study Data

Provisionally accepted
Mulugeta Semework Mulugeta Semework 1*Tsegazeab Laeke Tsegazeab Laeke 2Abenezer T. Aklilu Abenezer T. Aklilu 2Abraham Tadele Abraham Tadele 3Yordanos Awoke Yordanos Awoke 4Peter Teklewold Peter Teklewold 5Angelos G. Kolias Angelos G. Kolias 6Peter Hutchinson Peter Hutchinson 6Abel Balcha Abel Balcha 7Dagnachew Yohannes Dagnachew Yohannes 8Getaw W. Hassen Getaw W. Hassen 9
  • 1 Department of Neuroscience, Columbia University, New York City, New York, United States
  • 2 Black Lion Specialized Hospital, Department of Neurosurgery, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia Neurosurgery Unit, College of Health Science Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
  • 3 St Paul’s Hospital Millennium Medical College, AABET Hospital, Department of Neurosurgery, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
  • 4 Zewditu Memorial Hospital, Addis Ababa, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
  • 5 St. Paul's Hospital Millennium Medical College, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
  • 6 University of Cambridge, Cambridge, England, United Kingdom
  • 7 Wollo University, Dessie, Amhara, Ethiopia
  • 8 College of Medicine and Health Sciences, Hawassa University, Hawassa, Ethiopia
  • 9 Metropolitan Hospital Center, New York, New York, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is the leading cause of all injury-related deaths and disabilities within low to middle-income countries (LMICs). 1 Compared to high-income countries (HICs) individuals within LMICs experience nearly three times as many cases of TBI, a greater degree of the injuries resulting in disability, and are over twice as likely of dying following severe TBI. 1,2 Moreover, LMICs suffer from lower levels of funding for all levels of the health care system for patients suffering from TBI, causing those patients to return to the workforce before they are fully rehabilitated. These patients do not generally get comprehensive diagnostic workup, monitoring, or treatment, and return to work too quickly, often with undiagnosed post-traumatic deficits which in turn can lead to subsequent incidents of physical harm.Here, we share methods and results from our research project to establish innovative, simple, and scientifically based practices that dramatically leverage technology and validated testing strategies to identify post-TBI deficits quickly and accurately, to circumvent economic realities on the ground in LMICs.This study includes neurophysiological methods that can: 1) be implemented in LMICs and 2) test impairments caused by TBI, which generally affect brain processing speed, memory, and both executive and cognitive controls. We utilized paper tests such as the Montreal cognitive assessment (MoCA), line-bisection, and Bell's test.Furthermore, we combined modifications of neuroscience computer tasks to aid in assessing peripheral vision, memory, and analytical accuracies. Data from seventy-one subjects (51 patients and 20 controls, 15 females and 56 males) from 4 hospitals in Ethiopia are presented. The traumatic brain injury group consists of 17 mild, 28 moderate, and 8 severe patients (based on the initial Glasgow Comma Score). Controls are age and education-matched subjects (no known history of TBI, brain lesions, or spatial neglect symptoms).The main findings indicate that these examinations can identify several deficits, especially the MoCA test. These tests show great promise to assist in the evaluation of

    Keywords: Traumatic Brain Injury, TBI assessment, brain injury assessment, TBI tests, LMIC brain injury

    Received: 07 Mar 2024; Accepted: 29 Apr 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Semework, Laeke, Aklilu, Tadele, Awoke, Teklewold, Kolias, Hutchinson, Balcha, Yohannes and Hassen. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Mulugeta Semework, Department of Neuroscience, Columbia University, New York City, 10032, New York, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.