Colleagues at Salford have begun recruiting to a new £3m NIHR-funded study evaluating biomarkers in mild traumatic brain injury. Professor Fiona Lecky is the joint lead applicant for the BRaINS-TBI trial, with Dr Peter Kilgour the principal investigator locally.
In the UK about 1 million people attend emergency departments each year with mild traumatic brain injury (TBI). Although these injuries are often superficial, they can sometimes result in damage to brain tissue and symptoms that last for months or even years. When TBI is suspected, national guidelines recommend a CT scan but only around seven per cent of these will show a brain injury, meaning that many don’t affect care. If the person with a head injury is well when they attend hospital, or if a CT scan is reported as normal, they are often discharged home with simple advice and no follow up.
BRaINS-TBI aims to check whether easily-detected biomarkers released into the blood after TBI can reduce the number of CT scans performed in the ED for mild TBI and whether they can identify patients at higher risk of long-term problems following mild TBI.
The study is led by the University of Cambridge, with Dr Virginia Newcombe the chief investigator.