The Relationship Between Collision Dynamics and TBI

Topics and News related to Vehicle Safety Issues such as New Technologies and Recalls
MSI
Site Admin
Posts: 2302
Joined: Thu Jun 18, 2009 12:37 pm

The Relationship Between Collision Dynamics and TBI

Post by MSI »

A recent Linkedin Post by Claire Baker about a paper she published:
  • Our #paper 'The relationship between road traffic collision dynamics and traumatic brain injury pathology' (and my first first author paper) is now #published and available open access online.
    Please click the link for our graphical abstract and the full manuscript.

    This work is part of a multidisciplinary #collaboration between TRL and Imperial College London (Dyson School of Design Engineering, Brain Sciences, Medicine and Neurotechnology departments). I am very privileged to work with great experts from a broad range of different fields across two institutes who have actively invested significant time into my work and development. Many thanks to Mazdak Ghajari, Phil Martin, Mark Wilson and David Sharp for their excellent guidance and valuable contributions not only to this paper but my PhD project, which will be completed this year. Further thanks extend to everyone across both TRL and Imperial College London who I've learnt from and have directed and shaped our research.

    #phd #research #engineering #imperialcollegelondon #multidisciplinary
TBI graphics.png
TBI graphics.png (711.83 KiB) Viewed 4969 times
Abstract
  • Road traffic collisions are a major cause of traumatic brain injury. However, the relationship between road traffic collision dynamics and traumatic brain injury risk for different road users is unknown.

    We investigated 2,065 collisions from Great Britain’s Road Accident In-depth Studies (RAIDS) collision database involving:
    • 5,374 subjects (2013-20).
      • 595 subjects sustained a traumatic brain injury (20.2 pct of 2,940 casualties),
        including 315 moderate-severe and 133 mild-probable.
        Key pathologies included
        • skull fracture (179, 31.9pct),
        • subarachnoid haemorrhage (171, 30.5 pct),
        • focal brain injury (168, 29.9 pct) and
        • subdural haematoma (96, 17.1 pct).
    These results were extended nationally using >1,000,000 police-reported collision casualties. Extrapolating from the in-depth data we estimate that there are approx. 20,000 traumatic brain injury casualties (approx. 5,000 moderate-severe) annually on Great Britain’s roads, accounting for severity differences.

    Detailed collision investigation allows vehicle collision dynamics to be understood and the change-in-velocity (known as delta-V) to be estimated for a subset of in-depth collision data. Higher delta-V increased the risk of moderate-severe brain injury for all road users. The four key pathologies were not observed below 8km/h delta-V for pedestrians/cyclists and 19km/h delta-V for car occupants (higher delta-V threshold for focal injury in both groups).

    Traumatic brain injury risk depended on road user type, delta-V and impact direction. Accounting for delta-V, pedestrians/cyclists had a 6-times higher likelihood of moderate-severe brain injury than car occupants. Wearing a cycle helmet was protective against overall and mild-to-moderate-severe brain injury, particularly skull fracture and subdural haematoma. Cycle helmet protection was not due to travel or impact speed differences between helmeted and non-helmeted cyclist groups.

    We additionally examined the influence of delta-V direction. Car occupants exposed to a higher lateral delta-V component had a greater prevalence of moderate-severe brain injury, particularly subarachnoid haemorrhage. Multivariate logistic regression models created using total delta-V value and whether lateral delta-V was dominant had the best prediction capabilities (area under the receiver operator curve as high as 0.95). Collision notification systems are routinely fitted in new cars. These record delta-V and automatically alert emergency services to a collision in real-time.

    These risk relationships could therefore inform how routinely fitted automatic collision notification systems alert the emergency services to collisions with a high brain injury risk. Early notification of high-risk scenarios would enable quicker activation of the highest level of emergency service response. Identifying those that require neurosurgical care and ensuring they are transported directly to a centre with neuro-specialist provisions could improve patient outcomes.