Project Title: Long Term Service Needs in Traumatic Brain Injury

Research Team:
Colantonio, A.

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a major cause of death and disability in persons under 35 years of age. As most survivors are young and expected to live a near normal life expectancy, this means living many years with cognitive disability. There is a need however to identify the very long term needs of persons with TBI as they age. There is currently a paucity of information on the very long term needs of TBI survivors and implications for health service provision. In addition, the incidence of TBI has increased in older adulthood and the number of persons with TBI who are aging is expected to grow with the projected increase of persons who are elderly. Indeed, this trend has been documented in a 2001 research report by the Canadian Institute of Health Information that also highlights the special circumstances of this group.

M-THAC opportunities fund seed money catalyzed a series of projects, under the leadership of Dr. Colantonio, to examine service needs for persons with traumatic brain injury. They included:

• consideration of the long term service needs of women with brain injury (with K. Yoshida, H. McLean, N. Cullen, and A. Bellavance);
• this supported M.Sc. projects for N. Tadman and L. McDonald.
• The impact of insurance on outcomes for TBI (with S. Rappolt and B. Barry),
• Discharge Destination after such injuries (with H. Kim, R. Deber and L. Vernich).
• A project on Long term Health service needs of persons aging with TBI and their Caregivers, which supported the M.Sc thesis of R. Devitt.
• The seed money led to a 3 year CIHR multi-site grant examining long term service needs, which involves numerous community partners.

Selected Publications:

• Devitt, R., Colantonio, A., Dawson, D., Teare, G., Ratcliff, G., Chase, S. Prediction of long-term occupational performance outcomes for adults after moderate to severe traumatic brain injury.Disability and Rehabilitation. 28(9): 547-559

• Kim,Hwan; Colantonio,Angela; Deber,Raisa; Vernich,Lee (2006): Discharge destination from acute care after traumatic brain injury. Can. J. Neurol. Sci. 33(1), 48-52.