Neuropsychological Function in Adolescents Sustaining Mild Closed Head Injury1

Adolescents sustaining mild closed head injury were evaluated for mental functioning immediately following injury. Evaluation of their neuropsycho-logical performance in comparison with healthy adolescents and adolescents sustaining severe closed head injury revealed a pattern distinct from the other two groups. Mildly injured patients exhibited some dysfunction in verbally based measures of learning, abstraction, and reasoning, while appearing unimpaired on measures of attention, motor speed, and visual memory. KEY WORDS: mild CHI; neuropsychological deficits; adolescents; head injury. The adolescent population, for whom accidents are the leading cause of mor-bidity and mortality, incur approximately 185 to 300 + /100.000 head inju-ries each year in the United States alone (Kalsbeek, McLaurin, Harris, & Miller, 1980; Kraus, Fife, Cox, Ramstein, & Conroy, 1986). Considerable research has focused on the alteration in intellectual function subsequent to severe head trauma. However, far fewer studies have chosen to investigate the sequelae of mild head injury even though less severe injuries are more prevalent (Kraus et al., 1986)