Objectives: To explore whether a semi–structured post-traumatic amnesia (PTA) assessment interview (PTA-I) provides a practicable but equivalent estimation of PTA in patients attending the Emergency Department (ED) with head injury (HI) compared to the established Westmead PTA Scale Revised (R-WPTAS). Procedure: PTA was assessed using the R-WPTAS (includes a visual memory component) and the PTA-I (includes retrospective and verbal memory components), in patients attending an ED with (n=30) or without (n= 30) HI. Outcome measures were the Post-concussion Syndrome Checklist (PCSC) and the Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS). McNemar’s Tests and Chi-square analyses were used to determine the results. Results: The verbal memory component overestimated PTA in the control group by 24 %. Overall, the PTA-I did not discriminate between HI and control participants. However the retrospective PTA assessment embedded within the PTA-I did, with 100 % accuracy. Conclusions: The use of a verbal memory component to assess PTA in the ED is not supported by the results of this study. A retrospective PTA assessment appears to allow more accurate decision making regarding the admission criteria used in the ED and has advantages over the R-WPTAS: fewer test materials and no repeat assessments required to achieve an estimate of PTA duration.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:538454 |
| Date | January 2011 |
| Creators | Richards, Louise |
| Publisher | University of Glasgow |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://theses.gla.ac.uk/2422/ |
Page generated in 0.0115 seconds