Inaccuracy of Mild TBI Diagnoses at ER

Every year, thousands of victims of TBI are failed to be diagnosed with a mild brain injury because of emergency room failure to diagnose. In the study entitled “Accuracy of Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Diagnoses” (Powell JM, et al. 2008) medical documents were reviewed from emergency room examinations resulting in a finding that 56% of those actually suffering from a mild TBI did not have a documented and related diagnoses in the ER records. The greatest agreement between the persons studied and the ER physicians who gave a positive mild TBI diagnoses was for loss of consciousness, with the greatest discrepancy being the symptom of confusion.

This failure and confusion does great harm to those patients who developed enduring or permanent symptoms from MTBI and because of this failure of a baseline diagnosis. Follow up medical providers and especially insurance companies, will tend to disregard a legitimate diagnoses of MTBI.