Head injury and compensation: a preliminary investigation of the postconcussional syndrome in Harare.

A preliminary survey was carried out on forty-two (42) neurosurgical out-patients at Harare and Parirenyatwa Central Hospitals to establish some parameters of the postconcussional syndrome in victims of head injury. Both unstructured and structured forms of interview were used to obtain spontaneous (SPO) and elicited (ELC) responses. The symptoms of headache, dizziness and anxiety were spontaneously endorsed by 28.6 pc, 21.4 pc and 16.7 pc of the patients respectively. There was a close association between headache and dizziness (chi 2 = 5.9; p = 01; df = 1). In the ELC condition, all the nine postconcussional symptoms were endorsed as present by 59.5 pc-85.7 pc of the patients and the various symptoms were significantly associated with each other. Application for compensation was not found to be associated with increased symptomatology.