Yehuan Wu, Yu Zhang, Ya Wang, Yi Zhang
Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, The First People’s Hospital of Changzhou &Third Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University, 213003 Changzhou, China. Email: yehuan0331@foxmail.com
DOI: 10.2340/16501977-2673

Objective: To analyse disorders and components of attention in patients with complicated mild traumatic brain injury. This information is needed to enable clinical workers to evaluate and provide training for attention deficits in patients with mild traumatic brain injury.
Design: Randomized controlled trial.
Setting: In-patient and community recruitment.
Participants: In-patients with mild traumatic brain injury (n = 44) and community-recruited healthy subjects (n = 45).
Outcome measures: All participants used a battery of attention tests including the Digit Span Test (DST), Digit Cancellation Test (D-CAT1 and D-CAT2), Symbol Digit Modalities Test (SDMT), and the Paced Auditory Serial Addition Test (PASAT).
Results: There were no differences in the results of the D-CAT between the patient and control groups (p > 0. 05); however, there were significant differences in the DST, SDMT and PASAT (p < 0. 01).
Conclusion: Patients with mild traumatic brain injury were found to have normal sustained attention and selective attention, but impaired attention span, divided attention, shifting attention and information processing speed, requiring clinical workers to focus more on these deficits.

Patients with mild traumatic brain injury generally have a good prognosis. However, some patients develop attention deficit, which affects their life and work. This study evaluated the components of attention in patients with traumatic brain injury. The results show that patients with complicated mild traumatic brain injury had significant deficits in attention span, divided attention, shifting attention and information processing speed. Thus, clinicians should take into consideration these aspects of attention in treating patients with traumatic brain injury, in order to provide early rehabilitation interventions that may reduce the adverse effects of these deficits on life and work.