Dementia after traumatic brain injury

Abstract

Early retrospective studies suggested that individuals with a history of a traumatic brain injury (TBI) had a higher risk for dementia than those without a history of TBI. Two meta-analyses demonstrated that the risk for dementia is higher among men, but not women, with a history of TBI. More recent prospective studies, however, are providing discrepant findings, probably due to important methodological differences. TBI is usually associated with significant neuropsychological deficits, primarily in the domains of attention, executive functioning and memory. These deficits may not improve with time. TBI may also lower the threshold for the clinical expression of dementia among predisposed individuals, and the onset of Alzheimer's disease (AD)-like neuropathological and biochemical changes immediately after severe TBI may play an important role in this mechanism.