As already noted, however, the nonintervention control group also obtained significantly higher scores on some scales, namely 04 (Fig 3). The proportion of children with significant ongoing problems requiring referral
for additional assistance was similar in the interven tion (21%) and nonintervention (19%) groups. How-
ever, overall it seemed that those who received the intervention were reporting fewer problems 3
months after injury.
DISCUSSION
This study has confirmed that children who sus tain mild TBI experience headaches, dizziness, and fatigue in the first week after injury. There was also evidence of slowed information processing on the
Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children III coding subtest. By 3 months after injury, symptoms and
cognitive difficulties had abated in the mild TBI groups as a whole, although some slowing of infor mation processing was still apparent on the CHIPA SAT in the 10- to 12-year age group. However, there was a subgroup of 20% of children who were re ported to have significant ongoing problems. These children did not display significant neuropsycholog ical impairments, nor did they sustain more severe injuries in terms of PTA duration. However, they tended to have a history of previous head injury, learning difficulties, other neurologic or psychiatric
disturbance, or family stressors. Indeed, the present study supports the contention that these children
seem more likely than others to sustain these injuries. These findings are consistent with those of previous studies by Farmer et al Fay et al Asarnow et al,Bijur and Haslum,and Fletcher et al.There was little evidence of ongoing neuropsycho logical impairment 3 months after injury in either the mild TBI groups. However, the presence of sig-
nificant practice effects in both mild TBI and control groups on the WRAML and the CNT underscores the importance of using a control group to separate prac tice effects from recovery when serial testing on neu ropsychological measures.
The provision of information about expected symptoms, their likely time course, and how best to cope with them resulted in significantly reduced re porting of symptoms and behavioral changes 3 months after injury. Although small, this impact was