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Recent epidemiologic studies and collaborative investigations of outcome following severe head injury have reminded the medical community of the immensity of traumatic brain damage as a public health problem. In view of advances in emergency evacuation and neurosurgical management of head injury, the quality of long-term recovery has engaged the interest of investigators. Consequently, Roberts states that the principal purpose of the study reported in this monograph was to "examine the relationship between the type and severity of non-missile head injury and early neurological sequelae, and the final degree and characteristics of mental and physical disability between three and twenty-five years later in two groups of patients."
A neurologist, a psychologist, and a social worker collaborated in a study of long-term survival and disability after nonmissile head injury that produced a period of coma or posttraumatic amnesia persisting longer than one week. A "consecutive series" of 479 patients, of whom