Study Links Brain Injury to Stroke

TaiwanTaiwanese researchers report that people who have sustained a traumatic brain injury, known as TBI, have more than 10 times higher risk of stroke in the first 90 days after the injury, and the risk decreased as time passed. The study, which was published online in Stroke (July 28), found that individuals with TBI had a greater risk of intracerebral hemorrhage than patients without TBI.

The research team, from the Taipei Medical University in Taiwan, identified 675 strokes in TBI patients, and 207 in controls during the 90-day follow up; they estimated the stroke risk during a period of five years following TBI, and compared it with people who did not suffer a TBI, and compared over 23,000 TBI patients to nearly 70,000 controls.

Individuals who suffered a fractured skull were at greatest stroke risk, with 20 times higher for risk than for brain-injured patients with no skull fracture.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), about one in 53 people in the US suffer a TBI each year and that number could be higher: many brain injuries are undetected and unrecognizable , which some researchers have described as “a silent epidemic”. The CDC reports that every 21 seconds someone in the US sustains a TBI. More than 50,000 people die of TBI each year, and some 5.3 million Americans who have suffered TBI will have life-long effects and will also need long-term help.

Dr. Ralph Sacco, president of the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association, said of the study that "Traumatic brain injury has not been included among the usual stroke risk factors in the past…The mechanism is still not clear, but deserves further investigation."