Perceived Cognitive Deficits, Emotional Distress and Disability following Whiplash Injury

Abstract

OBJECTIVES:To describe the pattern of perceived cognitive deficits in patients with whiplash injury, to examine the relation between perceived cognitive deficits and disability, and to examine the determinants of perceived cognitive deficits in patients with whiplash injury. PARTICIPANTS: A total of 81 individuals participated in the study. There were 29 patients (13 men, 16 women) with a diagnosis of whiplash, grade I or II. Patients with work-related softtissue injuries (n=24) and nonclinical controls (n=28) were included as comparison groups. METHODS: Participants completed measures of perceived cognitive deficits, pain severity, depression, anxiety and pain-related disability. RESULTS:Both patient groups scored significantly higher than the nonpatient control group on the measure of perceived cognitive deficits, but did not differ significantly from each other. Perceptions of cognitive deficits were significantly correlated with pain-related disability. A hierarchical regression examining the relative contribution of anxiety, depression and pain showed that only anxiety and depression contributed significant unique variance to the prediction of perceived cognitive deficits. DISCUSSION: The potential benefits of focusing interventions on the management of anxiety and depression in the rehabilitation of patients with whiplash injuries are discussed.

Temperament and character: prognostic factors in whiplash patients?

“…These patients can easily be identified and are believed to have a longer recovery period [49]. Our study is comparable with previous whiplash studies concerning age, gender, and type of car accidents [45].…”

Managing Injuries of the Neck Trial (MINT): a randomised controlled trial of treatments for whiplash injuries

“…People with severe physical and psychological signs are twice as likely to experience a poor outcome; for chronic neck pain this rises to seven times more likely (reviewed by . More recent studies have focused on the psychological factors, identifying anger, blame and pre-existing life stresses to be important (Sullivan et al 2002). Few studies have examined the effect of physical and psychological factors in the same cohort, but it is likely that the resolution of pain is critical to alleviation of psychological symptoms (Wallis et al 1997).…”

Outcome from mild traumatic brain injury

“…self-reported symptoms in persons who have sustained remote MTBIs. As seen in Table 1 [ [161][162][163][164][165][166][167][168][169][170][171][172], postconcussion-like symptoms are common in healthy subjects [173][174][175][176][177] and in patients with no history of brain injury, such as outpatients seen for psychological treatment [178], outpatients seen for minor medical problems [179], personal injury claimants [179,180], individuals with chronic pain [181][182][183][184], and patients with whiplash [185].…”