Sustained attention in patients with mild traumatic brain injury

Objective: To demonstrate that two tests of sustained attention were sensitive to attention deficits in patients with mild traumatic brain injury (TBI). Design: A cross-sectional study recruiting 51 patients with TBI and 51 matched controls. Outcome measures: The Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART) and Monotone Counting Test. Results: The patient groups performed significantly worse than the normal controls in both sustained attention tests. The SART performance was also correlated with pathology severity in the patient group in terms of loss of consciousness (r = 0.247, p = 0.05). A cut-off of less than 1 standard deviation (SD) gives optimal diagnostic information in terms of sensitivity in the present sample (0.61 for Monotone Counting Test; 0.75 for SART). Conclusion: These findings suggest that the SART and Monotone Counting Test are sensitive to patients with mild TBI. The SART-assessed sustained attention is also sensitive enough to detect attention impairment in this clinical group regardless of diagnosis and may provide clinicians with an alternative method of assessing sustained attention in these clinical groups.