What is traumatic brain injury (TBI)?

Symptoms

What are the classifications of TBI?

A traumatic brain injury is classified as mild, moderate, or severe depending upon the amount of time that an athlete is initially rendered unconscious along with the length of time that the individual suffers from cognitive symptoms (confusion and disorientation).
Although a TBI can be diagnosed as “mild”, the effects on the individual can be long lasting and devastating to the family. TBI is diagnosed as mild if the loss of consciousness and/or confusion is shorter than 30 minutes. Common symptoms of mild TBI include:
• Fatigue
• Headaches
• Visual disturbances
• Memory loss
• Poor attention/concentration
• Sleep disturbances
• Dizziness/loss of balance
• Irritability/moodiness
• Feelings of depression
• Seizures

Mild TBI can be easily missed because the person may look normal and the symptoms may be subtle. Symptoms may also be delayed and not appear until weeks after the initial injury.
Moderate TBI is defined as those individuals with a loss of consciousness from 20 minutes up to 6 hours and a Glasgow Coma Scale of 9 – 12. The Glasgow Coma Scale is a scale used by medical professionals to determine the level of an individual’s coma based on the individual’s motor response, verbal response, and eye opening in response to simple commands.
The highest score than a healthy individual can get on the Glasgow Coma Scale is a 15. An individual with moderate disability would score in the range of 9-12, severe disability would score 3-8, and an individual in a vegetative state would score less than 3.
A severe TBI is defined as a brain injury resulting in a loss of consciousness for over 6 hours with a Glasgow Coma Scale of 3-8. How a moderate or severe brain injury affects the individual is dependent on a number of factors including:
• Severity of initial injury
• Areas of brain that were affected by the injury
• Areas of brain unaffected by the injury
• Resources available to help the individual recover