Background

TBI comes with a huge personal and social cost, resulting in more deaths in young adults than any other cause, and for those who survive, the lifelong consequences can often be devastating. It is a growing problem in low-and middle-income countries - in India one person dies every 10 minutes due to TBI.

Despite many advances in medical care, the outcome for a patient with TBI has not changed much over the past 20 years. Different approaches to treatment exist and we do not yet fully understand the disease. This is difficult to accept for relatives of the often young patients.

For these reasons, the international project CENTER-TBI (Collaborative European NeuroTrauma Effectiveness Research) was developed. Detailed data from over 4,500 patients recruited from across Europe has been analyzed during the project. This provides a unique overview of the scale of the problem of TBI in Europe, examines differences in treatment and pinpoints best practices in how TBI is identified and treated.
New technologies, such as advanced MR-Imaging were employed and further developed to better understand the disease. This has increased our knowledge of TBI and is expected to result in better and more targeted treatment.