452
Abstracts of 15th Annual Meeting
Smith-Seemiller, L., Lovell, M. R., & Smith, S. S. Impact of Acute Intoxication on the Glasgow Coma Scale Scores of Trauma Patients. The importance of consciousness level as an indicator of brain damage following traumatic brain injury is well known. The most widely used method for assessing consciousness level is the Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS), which is based on ratings of eye movements, verbalization, and motor responsiveness. The GCS has been found to be a reliable indicator of severity of brain injury, and is useful in predicting recovery. However, there has been some research suggesting that acute intoxication at the time of injury may artificially depress GCS scores, possibly creating a situation in which the interpretation of GCS as a measure of brain injury is misleading. The purpose of the current study was to provide additional information concerning the impact of blood alcohol level (BAL) on GCS scores. Subjects included patients who were admitted to the trauma service of a large tertiary care hospital. BAL and GCS scores are routinely obtained upon admission for all trauma patients. Once patients are medically stabilized and clear from post-traumatic amnesia, they undergo brief neuropsychological screening for discharge and treatment planning purposes. Over 1,500 patients are currently entered into the trauma service data base, and served as subjects for this study. Results of correlational analyses showed that there was a significant correlation between GCS and BAL. However, while GCS was found to predict neuropsychological assessment measures later in the hospital stay, BAL did not. It is concluded that, while GCS at the time of admission to the hospital is a useful measure for predicting severity of cognitive dysfunction after closed head injury, it may provide less accurate information if the individual is intoxicated at the time of injury.
Soper, H. V. Minor Physical Anomalies and Mental Retardation With and Without Autism. To look indirectly at possible relationships between uterine factors and mental retardation with and without autism, we compared the frequency of minor physical anomalies within these populations and those from a cohort of normal individuals. Such anomalies have been associated with congenital factors arising during the first trimester (Waldrop, Peterson, & Bell, 1968), and an unusually high rate of such anomalies within a population would certainly suggest possible uterine factors. Minor physical anomalies were assessed in 148 adults (77 males) with severe to profound mental retardaion but no autism, 72 adults (61 males) with autism and severe to profound mental retardation, and 100 normal adults (50 males), mostly colleagues of the author. A modified Waldrop scale (Waldrop et al., 1968) was used, and the two evaluators had to agree on all assessments. The mental retardation without autism mean anomaly score, 2.60, was significantly higher than the autism anomaly score, 1.50, which, in turn, was significantly higher than the normal score, .92. These results imply not only congenital factors in both disorders, but also point to the possibility of different congential factors for the two equivalently retarded groups.
Souheaver, G. T., Hazlewood, M. G., & Bournazos, C. Left Temporal Lobe Dysfunction: Utility of the Russell WAIS Index in an Epilepsy Population. The determination of specific cerebral site is a critical issue when considering neurosurgical intervention of medically intractable epilepsy. Russell (1993) reported an index based on four WAIS subtests, an addendum to an index reported by Dobbins and Russell (1990), which was purported to indicate left temporal lobe damage. As reported, left temporal focal damage is indicated when the obtained index score is less than 0, that is, when the average of Vocabulary and Information are less than the average of Digit Span and Similarities. The present study addressed the validity of the Russell WAIS Index in epilepsy patients being