Search

Introduction: Among children who sustain mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), 10-30% develop a cluster of cognitive, physical, and emotional symptoms commonly referred to as post-concussion syndrome (PCS). Symptoms typically resolve within 7-10 days, but a minority of patients report symptoms that persist for months or even years. The aim of our study was to identify a neurobiochemical marker after mTBI that can predict the presence of post-concussion syndrome three months after head injury in paediatric patients., Materials and Methods: Children between 7 and 16 years of age who had head trauma and no other complaints were included. Three months after the initial visit, participants or parents/guardians were interviewed in person about the children's PCS symptoms using the Rivermead Post-Concussion Symptoms Questionnaire (RPQ)., Results: The mean value of S100B protein in serum in 38 patients without signs of PCS was 0.266 μg L -1 , with a 95% confidence interval (CI) of 0.221 - 0.310 μg L -1 . Among the 22 patients with signs of PCS, the mean value of S100B protein in serum was 0.845 μg L -1 , with a 95% CI of 0.745-0.945 μg L -1 . Patients with signs of PCS had higher S100B protein levels than those without signs of PCS ( p  < 0.0001)., Conclusions: Our prospective study showed that S100B protein is a useful neurobiomarker for detecting paediatric patients at risk for post-concussion syndrome. We found that the biomarker S100B correlated with the severity of traumatic brain injury (number of lesions on CT) and the presence of post-concussion syndrome.

Introduction: Traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) are very common in paediatric populations, in which they are also a leading cause of death. Computed tomography (CT) overuse in these populations results in ionization radiation exposure, which can lead to lethal malignancies. The aims of this study were to investigate the accuracy of serum S100B levels with respect to the detection of cranial injury in children with mild TBI and to determine whether decisions regarding the performance of CT can be made based on biomarker levels alone., Materials and Methods: This was a single-center prospective cohort study that was carried out from December 2016 to December 2017. A total of 80 children with mild TBI who met the inclusion criteria were included in the study. The patients were between 2 and 16 years of age. We determined S100B protein levels and performed head CTs in all the patients., Results: Patients with cranial injury, as detected by CT, had higher S100B protein levels than those without cranial injury ( p < 0.0001). We found that patients with cranial injury (head CT+) had higher mean S100B protein levels (0.527  μ g L -1 , 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.447-0.607  μ g L -1 ) than did patients without cranial injury (head CT-) (0.145  μ g L -1 , 95% CI 0.138-0.152  μ g L -1 ). Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis clearly showed that S100B protein levels differed between patients with and without cranial injury at 3 hours after TBI (AUC = 0.893, 95% CI 0.786-0.987, p = 0.0001)., Conclusion: Serum S100B levels cannot replace clinical examinations or CT as tools for identifying paediatric patients with mild head injury; however, serum S100B levels can be used to identify low-risk patients to prevent such patients from being exposed to radiation unnecessarily.

Epidermoid cysts are rare disontogenetic tumoral lesions in the cranial compartment (1% of all intracranial tumors) and are usually located in relation to the cranial sutures; the intradiploic location is the less frequent. We report a clinical case in which the post-traumatic etiology of a frontal intradiploic epidermoid is considered. The histological findings revealed the presence of an epidermoid tumor associated with a typical foreign body inflammatory reaction, after repeated head traumas at the site of the tumour. This is the first case in whom the association between this tumoral lesion and a tissue inflammatory reaction due to foreign bodies is demonstrated.