Prospective memory 7 years after severe childhood traumatic brain injury - the TGE 2 prospective longitudinal study.

OBJECTIVE

To investigate the long-term outcome in prospective memory (PM), seven years after childhood severe traumatic brain injury (TBI), in a prospective longitudinal cohort.

PARTICIPANTS

76 young individuals (aged 7-22 years): 39 patients with a severe accidental TBI included prospectively seven years earlier, aged 0-15 years at injury, and 37 controls individually matched on age, gender and parental education.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Three novel short PM tasks varying in the delay, motivation and context (ecological versus paper and pencil task).

RESULTS

Individuals with severe TBI showed significantly poorer PM than matched controls in the two low-motivation PM tasks: (1) the ecological long-delay task consisting of sending a letter on a rainy day (p=0.047, odds ratio = 2.6); (2) the non-ecological short-delay task consisting of taking off post-its while identifying facial emotions (p=0.004, r=0.34). Differences in PM on the high motivation were not significant. PM is impaired several years post severe TBI.