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Purpose: People with traumatic brain injury are frequently involved in a litigation because another person was at fault for causing the accident. A compensation amount will often be settled to compensate the victim for the past, present, future damages and losses suffered. We report descriptive data about the full and final personal compensation amount and investigated its association with patient's outcomes.Methods: We used a longitudinal prospective study of severe TBI patients injured in 2005–2007 (PariS-TBI). Questions regarding involvement in a litigation were asked concurrently with 4 and 8-year outcomes.Results: Among 160 participants assessed 4 and/or 8 years post-injury, a total of 67 persons declared being involved in a litigation, among which 38 people reported a compensation amount of a mean €292,653 (standard deviation = 436,334; interquartile 25–50–75 = 37,000–100,000–500,000; minimum = 1,500-maximum = 2,000,000). A higher compensation amount was associated with more severe disability and cognitive impairment in patients, and with more informal care time provided by caregivers. However, no significant association related to patient's gender, age, years of education, motor/balance impairment, return to work status, mood and related to caregiver's subjective burden was found.Conclusion: Financial compensation was related to victims' long-term severity of impairment, although some extreme cases with severe disability were granted very poor compensation.

The relationships between cognitive impairment that exist during the clinical course of multiple sclerosis (MS) remain poorly described. The effect of disease duration has been studied in a few longitudinal cohorts and some cross-sectional studies that suggest that cognitive deficits tend to extend with disease duration. However, the effect of disease duration seems to be confounded by the effect of age. At the pre-clinical stage, cognitive deficits have been observed in patients with radiologically isolated syndromes, and their profile is similar than in clinically isolated syndromes (CIS) and relapsing-remitting MS (RRMS). The frequency of cognitive impairment tends to be higher in RRMS than in CIS. In these phenotypes, slowness of information processing speed (IPS) and episodic verbal and visuo-spatial memory deficits are frequently observed, but executive functions, and in particular verbal fluency, could also be impaired. More frequent and severe deficits are reported in SPMS than in RRMS with more severe deficits for memory tests, working memory and IPS. Similarly to what is observed in SPMS, patients with primary progressive MS (PPMS) present with a wide range of cognitive deficits in IPS, attention, working memory, executive functions, and verbal episodic memory with more tests and domains impaired than RRMS patients. Altogether these data suggested that not only the duration of the disease and age play an important role in the cognitive profile of patients, but also the phenotype itself, probably because of its specific pathological mechanism.

Background and aims: Severe traumatic brain injury is a leading cause of acquired persistent disabilities, and represents an important health and economic burden. However, the determinants of long-term outcome have rarely been systematically studied in a prospective longitudinal study of a homogeneous group of patients suffering exclusively from severe TBIMethods: Prospective observational study of an inception cohort of adult patients with severe traumatic brain injury in the Parisian area (PariS-TBI). Outcome was assessed with face-to-face interview 8 years after Traumatic Brain Injury, focusing on impairments, activity limitations, and participation restriction.Results: Five hundred and four patients were included between 2005 and 2007. At 8-year follow-up, 261 patients were deceased, 128 were lost to follow-up, 22 refused to participate, and 86 were finally evaluated. Age, gender, initial injury severity did not significantly differ between evaluated patients and lost to follow-up, but the latter were more frequently students or unemployed. Mean age was 41.9 (SD 13.6), 79% were male, median initial Glasgow Coma Scale Score was 6. The most frequent somatic complaints concerned balance (47.5%), motricity (31%), and headaches (36%), but these were less frequent than cognitive complaints (Memory 71%, Slowness 68%, Concentration 67%). According to the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS), 25 % had a score >8 for anxiety and 23.7% for depression. According to the Extended Glasgow Outcome Scale, 19.8% remained severely disabled, 46.5% moderately disabled, 33.7% had a good recovery. Older age, longer education duration, lower functional status upon intensive care discharge, and more severe 8-year dysexecutive problems were significantly associated with a lower Extended Glasgow Outcome Scale score in multivariable analysis. At 8 years, 48.7% of patients were employed in a productive job. Of those, 38% declared a salary loss since traumatic brain injury. Unemployment was significantly associated with lower 1-year GOSE score and more severe 8-year dysexecutive problems.Conclusions: These results from an inception cohort study highlight the fact that long-term outcome after severe TBI is determined by a complex combination of injury-related, demographic and neuropsychological factors. Long after the injury, persisting impairments still interfere with social integration, and participation.

Recent economic changes have increased the focus on energy conservation in buildings. Improve insulation represents one of the biggest challenge to save energy. The TP02 Huksefux® Non Steady State Probe (NSSP) has been used to determine the thermal conductivity of the building insulation materials. Usually, the long term approximation equation (linear form) is applied to determine the thermal conductivity when using hot wire techniques. Long term approximation has been successfully used to characterize glycerol: a fluid which doesn’t present contact resistance and porosity. But, an S-shaped appears for more porous materials. So to generalize the possibility of using this method, glass beads of 2, 8 and 10 mm balls diameters have been tested before characterising insulation materials. Firstly, we define the best portions in time (t 1 and t 2 ) of the S-shaped curve to determine thermal conductivity. Secondly, Comsol Multiphysics® test the influence of parameters of the TP02 Huksefux® like components of the probe, the contact resistance and electrical power on the S-shaped form.

Background and purpose: Whether some gray matter (GM) regions are differentially vulnerable at the early stages of MS is still unknown. The objective of this study is to investigate whether deep and cortical GM are differentially vulnerable after a clinically isolated syndrome (CIS) suggestive of multiple sclerosis (MS).Methods: Fifty-six patients with CIS (PwCIS) and 38 healthy controls (HC) had conventional and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) at baseline and 46 PwCIS and 20 HC were rescanned after 1 year. Deep GM (DGM) volumes, cortical thickness (CTh), and DTI metrics (FA: fractional anisotropy; MD: mean diffusivity) within these structures were calculated for each participant at each time-point and compared between PwCIS and HC. Linear regression models were used to investigate whether baseline DTI parameters could predict GM volume loss over time.Results: At baseline, GM volumes did not differ between PwCIS and HC, but hippocampal MD was higher in PwCIS than HC (p < 0.01). Over 1 year, GM alterations became more widespread with putamen and hippocampus volumes decreasing in PwCIS (p < 0.01), and cortical thinning in different parts of the cortex along with a significant increase of MD. Hippocampus MD at baseline could predict its volume loss (R2 = 0.159; p < 0.05) and cortical thinning was associated to microstructural damage (Spearman's rho ranging from −0.424 to −0.603 with p < 0.003).Conclusion: Along with MS being a diffuse inflammatory disease, GM showed a differential vulnerability at the early stage spreading from hippocampus to the cortex. Hippocampus volume loss could be predicted by its MD at baseline.