Age Suppresses the Association Between Traumatic Brain Injury Severity and Functional Outcomes: A Study Using the NIDILRR TBIMS Dataset.
J Head Trauma Rehabil
; 2024 Apr 17.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-38652669
ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVES:
Recovery from traumatic brain injury (TBI) is extremely difficult to predict, with TBI severity usually demonstrating weak predictive validity for functional or other outcomes. A possible explanation may lie in the statistical phenomenon called suppression, according to which a third variable masks the true association between predictor and outcome, making it appear weaker than it actually is. Age at injury is a strong candidate as a suppressor because of its well-established main and moderating effects on TBI outcomes. We tested age at injury as a possible suppressor in the predictive chain of effects between TBI severity and functional disability, up to 10 years post-TBI.SETTING:
Follow-up interviews were conducted during telephone interviews.PARTICIPANTS:
We used data from the 2020 NDILRR Model Systems National Dataset for 4 successive follow-up interviews year 1 (n = 10,734), year 2 (n = 9174), year 5 (n = 6,201), and year 10 (n = 3027).DESIGN:
Successive cross-sectional multiple regression analyses. MAINMEASURES:
Injury severity was operationalized using a categorical variable representing duration of posttrauma amnesia. The Glasgow Outcomes Scale-Extended (GOS-E) operationally defined functioning. Sociodemographic characteristics having significant bivariate correlations with GOS-E were included.RESULTS:
Entry of age at injury into the regression models significantly increases the association between TBI severity and functioning up to 10 years post-TBI.CONCLUSIONS:
Age at injury is a suppressor variable, masking the true effect of injury severity on functional outcomes. Identifying the mediators of this suppression effect is an important direction for TBI rehabilitation research.
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Language:
En
Journal:
J Head Trauma Rehabil
Journal subject:
REABILITACAO
/
TRAUMATOLOGIA
Year:
2024
Document type:
Article
Country of publication: