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Mild traumatic brain injury and postconcussion syndrome: the importance of base rates in diagnosis and clinical formulation

Department of Neurology, University Hospital Münster, Münster, Germany

Correspondence to:
Dr G E Powell, Powell Campbell Edelmann, Chartered Psychologists, 9 Devonshire Place, London, W1G 6HR, UK; POWELLlondon@compuserve.com

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The paper by Meares and colleagues¹ in this issue of J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry concerns the implications of defining a syndrome by symptoms that have a high base rate of occurrence in the general population or in other syndromes (see page 300). The issue of neglect of base rates was raised five decades ago in the seminal work of Paul Meehl,² who pointed out that "the chief reason for our ignorance of the base rates is nothing more subtle than our failure to compute them" (page 234). There are now systematic collections of base rate data in the general population³ and in groups relevant to neuropsychology,⁴ and websites where national statistics are posted (www.statistics.gov.uk).

Symptoms of postconcussion syndrome (PCS) are rife in the general population (www.statistics.gov.uk) (eg, 29% complain of sleep problems, 27% of fatigue and 20% of irritability, figures that are stable across . . . [Full text of this article]

Relevant Article

Mild traumatic brain injury does not predict acute postconcussion syndrome

S Meares, E A Shores, A J Taylor, J Batchelor, R A Bryant, I J Baguley, J Chapman, J Gurka, K Dawson, L Capon, and J E Marosszeky
J. Neurol. Neurosurg. Psychiatry 2008 79: 300-306. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]