[Chronic issues related to traumatic brain injury: Traumatic brain injury is not an incident]

Abstract

Despite an increased awareness of the long-term consequences of traumatic brain injury, health care professionals often consider traumatic brain injury as an incident. However, patients with traumatic brain injury may experience long-term neurological, cognitive and behavioural problems. Due to the absence of valid prognostic models for long term sequelae there is a lack of standardized risk management. This is a major obstacle to placing traumatic brain injury in a chronic disease model and explains the difficulty in getting the correct support with the adequate level of expertise when required. Many patients face long-term unmet needs. By means of two case reports we discuss in more detail the long-term consequences of mild and severe traumatic brain injury. In addition, we discuss the organization of care for these patients in the Netherlands. In our opinion, the general practitioner has an important role in recognizing health care problems or neurobehavioural concerns for patients with traumatic brain injury. Subsequently, they can refer to, for example, the rehabilitation physician or neurologist, or draw attention to local patient associations.