Classification of Traumatic Brain Injury Workshop

Classification of TBI Workshop

Sponsored by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, the Defense and Veteran’s Brain Injury Consortium, the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research, and the Brain Injury Association of America

Oct. 17 – 18, 2007
Washington, D.C.

This workshop was convened in order to review what is known about the heterogeneity of TBI and to develop strategies to capture and incorporate this information into research studies.  The goal was to identify the steps necessary for developing a pathoanatomical TBI classification system that could ultimately be used to identify subpopulations of patients most likely to benefit from investigational treatments.  Three teams comprised of clinical and scientific experts were challenged to propose ways to 1) use existing and emerging tools to detect and differentiate between the most common types and patterns of injury associated with TBI; and 2) develop a classification scheme that would cluster TBI patients into groups based on these major types of injury.   Each team presented their ideas on: the pathoanatomical heterogeneity of TBI; the tools available to discriminate between the heterogeneity; and the data elements required to develop a new classification scheme.  Breakout sessions to discuss the acute neurological events, neuroimaging, serum biomarkers, functional outcome measures, and data collection and analysis followed the presentations.  Recommendations were made for enhancing the utility of available or emerging tools in order to facilitate implementation of a pathoanatomical classification approach for clinical trials. The workshop illustrated the need for multidisciplinary research efforts to develop a database across the spectrum of injury severities for TBI. The next steps are to publish the workshop proceedings in the Journal of Neurotrauma and to present them at the National Neurotrauma Society meeting in 2008. Those attending considered this an important first step in a concerted effort to address the challenge that the heterogeneity of TBI poses to therapy development.

This summary was prepared by Ramona Hicks, Ph.D., NINDS