Children under 4 years of age have the highest incidence of traumatic brain injury (TBI) among the non-elderly and may be at high risk of poor developmental outcomes. We prospectively enrolled a cohort of children injured before 31 months old with TBI or orthopedic injury (OI), from 2013 to 2015 at two pediatric level 1 trauma centers to study very young children's developmental outcomes after injury. We used Ages & Stages-3 and Ages & Stages: Social-Emotional screening tools to measure children's development at pre-injury and 3 and 12 months post-injury. The cohort included 123 children with TBI categorized as mild (n = 48), complicated-mild or moderate (n = 54), and severe (n = 21) and 45 children with OI. Generalized linear models examined effects of injury severity and age at injury controlling for pre-injury ratings. Children with mild or complicated-mild/moderate TBI generally remained on developmental track. Compared to OI, children with severe TBI tended to have a negative developmental trajectory with decrements in communication (−7.07; 95% confidence interval [CI], −13.7, −0.48), gross motor (−15.2; 95% CI, −21.1, −9.19), problem solving (−11.6; 95% CI, −17.9, −5.29), personal-social (−16.8; 95% CI, −22.8, −10.8), and social-emotional (21.0; 95% CI, 7.32, 34.7) domains 12 months post-injury. Developmental effects from TBI differed by age at injury: Infants had more difficulties than older children in communication and problem-solving domains. Despite low developmental scores in 28% of the cohort, only 5% were receiving Early Childhood Intervention (ECI) services 12 months after injury. Early age at injury is a vulnerability factor after TBI. Young age and severe injury should prompt evaluation for ECI.
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