Traumatic brain injury: Changing concepts and approaches

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) represents a huge global medical and public health problem across all ages and in all populations. In this review, we discussed the changing concepts and approaches. Globally, the incidence is increasing and in high income countries epidemiologic patterns are changing with consequences for prevention campaigns. TBI should not be viewed as an event, but as a progressive and chronic disease with lifetime consequences. In the clinical field, precision approaches to treatment are being developed, which require more accurate disease phenotyping. Recent advances in genomics, neuroimaging and biomarker development offer great opportunities to develop improved phenotyping and better disease characterization. In clinical research, randomized controlled clinical trials are being complemented by large data collections in broad TBI populations in comparative effectiveness designs. Global collaborations are being developed among funding agencies, research organizations and researchers. Only by combining efforts and collaboration will we be able to advance the field by providing long-needed evidence to support practice recommendations and to improve treatment.