Long-term cognitive impairment following single mild traumatic brain injury with loss of consciousness: Findings from the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging.

Objective: We examined the extent to which loss of consciousness (LOC) following mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) may be associated with impairments in executive functions and declarative memory more than a year after brain injury.Method: Analyses were run on 548 participants who had self-reported LOC of <1 min, 441 with LOC of 1-20 min, and 13,609 no brain injury comparison participants, taken from the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging (CLSA), a nationwide study on health and aging.
Results: Those that had mTBI with LOC of 1-20 min were more likely than no head injury comparisons to be impaired on measures of executive functioning and declarative memory. Impairments were evident when examining for single- and two-test impairment rates on measures of executive functioning and declarative memory.Conclusions: A subset of people that had reported a single mTBI with LOC more than 12 months ago may experience impairments in executive functioning and declarative memory, particularly those who spent more time unconscious.