Mild Traumatic Brain Injuries

These are really annoying because no one can quite agree on whether they are the same as concussion or not. Some people say that MTBIs are a type of concussion. Other people say that concussions are a type of MTBIs. Still others use then synonymously, while another group contend that they are entirely separate.

Secondly, the MeSH term "Brain Injuries, Traumatic" was added to the MeSH tree in 2017.

So what's a librarian to do?

For the next few years, this will probably do just fine:

"Brain Concussion"[Mesh]
OR
"Brain Injuries"[Mesh] AND (mild[tiab] OR mtbi[tiab])

If it's after 2022 and you just want results from the past 5 years, you could try this:

"Brain Concussion"[Mesh]
OR
"Brain Injuries, Traumatic"[Mesh] AND (mild[tiab] OR mtbi[tiab])

Yikes, I just realised that 5 years from now is in the 2020s! Scary thought...

If you want to get really fancy, you could do something like this:

"Brain Concussion"[Mesh]
OR
"Brain Injuries, Traumatic"[Mesh] AND (mild[tiab] OR mtbi[tiab]) AND "2017/01/01"[PDat] : "3000/12/31"[PDat]
OR
"Brain Injuries"[Mesh] AND (mild[tiab] OR mtbi[tiab]) AND "1940/01/01"[PDat] : "2016/12/31"[PDat]

You can change the 1940 part to whatever year suits your search.

Naturally, there may be some subheadings of interest (diagnosis and/or therapy, for example), to add to those MeSH.

Once you've got that set, with any appropriate subheadings, then add any additional MeSH terms and/or limits of interest.

What I like to do is, go through the results treating the terms as synonymous. That way you won't miss anything of relevance. However, when it's time to select some articles of particular relevance to attach to the email (or print and add to the enveloppe), I like to select articles using the same terminology which the doctor used.

Lastly, in the text of the email or the accompanying letter, I just explain to the doctor that there is some controversy about the terminology, and how I've dealt with it.

EMBASE:

exp traumatic brain injury/ and (mild or mtbi).mp.
OR
exp brain concussion/