TBI populations and underreporting

According Department of Defense (2000-2015) 327,299 members of the military have had some type of traumatic brain injury.

  • 269,580 were classified as mild (82.4%)
  • 27,728 troops suffered moderate (8.5%)
  • 3,422 suffered severe (1%)
  • 4,865 suffered penetrating TBI (1.5%)
  • 191,369 were in the Army

Emergency Departments (ED)

  • Traumatic brain injury (TBI) incidence has been reported to result in more than 1,250,000 Emergency Department (ED) visits a year (Brewer, Metzger & Therrien, 2010) in the US with an estimated cost of 1.5 billion dollars a year.
  • It has also been estimated that 56% of mTBI is not diagnosed in the ED (Powell, Ferraro, Dikmen, Temkin & Bell, 2000).
  • The highest emergency department identification occurred when there was a Loss of Consciousness (LOC) and the lowest when the symptom was confusion.
  • As a comparison, each year, about 750,000 Americans suffer a heart attack.

Sports

  • The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2008) estimates that there are 1.6–3.8 million sports- and recreation-related concussions in the United States each year.
  • There are 32 NFL teams that average of .67 concussion recorded per game (2010).
  • It has been estimated that there is a 72% chance of a concussion injury occurring during every NFL game. There were 128 concussions in the NHL during the 2011-2012 season.
  • There is an estimated 650 college football teams in the US.
  • There are about 67,000 players diagnosed with TBIs during HS football games each year and minimally 50 football players have died or sustained serious head injuries during football games since 1997.
  • 1.25 million athletes compete in contact sports at the high school level (Lovell, et al., 2003).

Failure to report a TBI

  • A survey of high school football players found that only 47% of the athletes reported a concussion at the time of injury. The reasons provided by the students for not reporting were
  • not serious enough to need attention (66%)
  • wanting to stay in the game (41%)
  • not recognizing the occurrence of a concussion (36%)
  • and not wanting to disappoint their teammates (22%).