Heads Up: Brain Injury in Your Practice A Tool Kit for Physicians
An estimated 75%-90% of the 1.4 million traumatic brain injury-related deaths, hospitalizations, and emergency department visits that occur each year are concussions or mild traumatic brain injuries (MTBI).
Many individuals who sustain an MTBI are not hospitalized or receive no medical care at all. An unknown proportion of those who are not hospitalized may experience long-term problems such as persistent headache, pain, fatigue, vision or hearing problems, memory problems, confusion, sleep disturbances, or mood changes. Symptoms of MTBI or concussion may appear mild, but can lead to significant, life-long impairment affecting an individual's ability to function physically, cognitively, and psychologically.
Physicians can play a key role in helping to prevent MTBI or concussion and improve a patient's health outcomes through early diagnosis, management, and appropriate referral.
In response, CDC, in collaboration with an expert work group, has recently updated and revised the "Heads Up: Brain Injury in Your Practice" tool kit. This tool kit is available free-of-charge and contains practical, easy-to-use clinical information and tools, including:
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a booklet with information on diagnosis and management of MTBI;
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a patient assessment tool (Acute Concussion Evaluation or ACE);
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a care plan to help guide a patient's recovery;
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fact sheets in English and Spanish on preventing concussion;
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a palm card for the on-field management of sports-related concussion; and
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a CD-ROM with downloadable kit materials and additional MTBI resources.
View and download kit materials
(PDFs require Adobe Acrobat Reader)
Information for Patients
- Heads Up: Preventing Concussion fact sheetEnglish [PDF 239 KB]
Spanish [PDF 219 KB]
View the newly revised MTBI clinical diagnosis guidelines that can help improve diagnosis, treatment, and patient outcomes for the more than one million people who visit the emergency department every year for mild TBI or concussion.
The revised guidelines address the following four key questions and offers recommended courses of action:
- Which patients with MTBI should have a head CT scan in the ER?
- Is an MRI more useful than a CT scan when assessing a patient with acute MTBI?
- In MTBI patients, are brain specific blood serum biomarkers predictive of an acute traumatic intracranial injury?
- Should an MTBI patient with a normal neurologic evaluation and a negative CT scan be discharged from the ER?
CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control-the Injury Center-invites your comments about the "Heads Up: Brain Injury in Your Practice" tool kit. We are especially interested in knowing which materials you found most useful and your recommendations for ways to improve the tool kit. To provide comments, please
e-mail us at ncipcdirinfo@cdc.gov.
Contact Us:
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC)
4770 Buford Hwy, NE
MS F-63
Atlanta, GA 30341-3717 - 800-CDC-INFO
(800-232-4636)
TTY: (888) 232-6348
24 Hours/Every Day - cdcinfo@cdc.gov
