Emergency Department Visits for Mild Traumatic Brain Injury: Associations with Geriatric Age, Sex, and Fall Injury

Abstract

Purpose: The highest rates mTBI occurrence are seen among geriatric populations (ages ≥65), and these patients often have persistent and untreated symptoms. This study's purpose was to explore mild traumatic brain injury initial onset (mTBI-IN) and mild traumatic brain injury subsequent (mTBI-S) emergency department (ED) visit population percentages and associations with geriatric (population ages ≥65), sex, and fall mechanism of injury.

Methods: The design was a population-based cross-sectional study using data from the 2018 Nationwide Emergency Department Sample (NEDS). Study sample size was 261,349. An independent t-test was used to investigate mean age differences between mTBI-IN and mTBI-S. Pearson's chi-squared correlational analyses were used to investigate associations of age, sex, and fall injury with mTBI-IN and mTBI-S.

Results: The mean age of those in 2018 with ED visits suggested that age was older for those patients with mTBI-S (age mean, 50.4 yrs) than those with mTBI-IN (age mean, 41.4 yrs) (95% CI 9.77, 8.30; p=0.025). The number of visits for those aged ≥65 was significantly associated with mTBI-S (p<0.001). More males than females reported mTBI-S ED visits in all ages (p=0.022). Falls injury alone was not found to be significantly associated with visits (p<0.001).

Conclusions: Those returning to the ED for continued care after mTBI were associated with those aged ≥65. Monitoring after mTBI ED visits may need to target geriatric populations for medical management.