Traumatic Brain Injury Recovery Trajectories in Patients With Disorders of Consciousness

To the Editor We congratulate Kowalski et al¹ for their longitudinal nested cohort of patients with moderate to severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) using the long-standing, federally supported Traumatic Brain Injury Model Systems (TBIMS) National Database,² which has 3 decades of follow-up. Their findings are remarkable in that the majority (82%) of initially comatose patients recovered consciousness after a stay in an inpatient rehabilitation center. More impressive is that 2 of 5 patients with disorders of consciousness (DOC) regained either partial or full independence. However, there are several interesting limitations that we thought were worth highlighting to the JAMA Neurology readership.