Traumatic Brain Injury: Are We Conducting Enough Resarch
Abstract
Background: Following an uptick in blast injuries, the past decade has seen a large scale recategorization of what were previously thought of as benign 'concussions' into a significant subset of Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). The expanded diagnosis has gained public recognition and research funding. However, this has yet to translate into a significant increase in treatment options. There have been concerns that a paucity of appropriate research is behind the lack of emerging treatments. As neurological disorders are notoriously complex, we set out to compare the state of TBI research to that of the 11 other most common neurological diagnoses. Methods: We queried the Pubmed database from 1996-2016 for studies performed in the top 12 neurological diagnoses. The totals were segmented by randomized controlled trials (RCTs), diagnostic studies, and systematic reviews. A common econometric method known as the translog production function (TPF), was used to analyze the data. This method estimates the exponential growth rate of a given output as a function of a set of inputs. For the present study, the output was the number of published articles over time, within each diagnosis and study type. The TPF was specified as the Number of Articles=lntercept (e1) * Year (e2), where e1 is the base of the natural log, approximately 2.718 and e2 is the exponential growth rate. General linear models were used to estimate the value of e1 and e2 for each diagnosis and type of study using SAS 9.4. The resulting growth rates were then compared.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Apr 17, 2017
- Accession Number
- AD1037431
Entities
People
- Mariya Gusman
Organizations
- 59th Medical Wing