Vestibular dysfunction – with imbalance and/or dizziness – affects most patients with acute traumatic brain injury (TBI) across all severities.
Typically, patients are affected by multiple vestibular diagnoses. We recently conducted the first acute-prospective study in moderate-to-severe TBI showing that imbalance and deficits in vestibular perception overlap behaviourally and neuroanatomically. Additionally, balance recovery is predicted by vestibular perceptual recovery. Similar data for mTBI is not available. We predict however that mTBI patients will also have multiple vestibular diagnoses and whose functional recovery (return to work/play) will depend upon a complex interplay between initial degree of brain injury affecting imbalance and vestibular perception, and aggravating factors including vestibular migraine, mood and sleep disorders. We predict that in slow recovery patients, the pattern of dysfunction will differ between those with significant brain injury (with objective vestibular dysfunction) vs. those without significant brain injury manifesting without objective vestibular dysfunction. However, since both groups’ recovery is modulated by the burden of aggravating factors, we predict that their respective degree of disability and its rate of recovery (measured by return to work/play) will not differ. The key study outcome however will be personalising treatment using the pattern of disability to inform the design of future interventional studies.
Lead Researchers