Worsening Symptoms after MTBI

The conventional medical wisdom is that symptoms of a mild traumatic brain injury are at their worst at the time of the trauma and thereafter always get better, not worse. However, studies have shown (Bleiberg, J et al. 1997) that this is not always the case, when they compared normal volunteers with persons suffering from MTBI. The injured group showed erratic and inconsistent performances on follow-up testing, with some subjects showing worsening performance across days. This and other studies are showing that this intolerance to worsening symptoms over time has no medical basis.