Fatigue in Children With Moderate or Severe Traumatic Brain Injury Compared With Children With Orthopedic Injury: Characteristics and Associated Factors.

Objective: To characterize fatigue in children with moderate or severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) and to identify associated factors.

Setting: Urban tertiary pediatric healthcare facility.

Participants: Children aged 5 to 15 years with a moderate TBI (n = 21), severe TBI (n = 23), or an orthopedic injury (OI; n = 38).

Design: Case-control study.

Main Measures: (i) Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory Multidimensional Fatigue Scale (PedsQL-MFS), completed by parents and children; (ii) Sleep Disturbance Scale for Children, completed by parents. Data on injury-specific factors and other factors of interest were also collected.

Results: The 2 TBI groups did not differ on any of the fatigue outcomes (child or parent ratings). Relative to the OI group, parents rated children in both TBI groups as experiencing greater fatigue. However, on self-ratings, only children with moderate TBI endorsed greater fatigue. Sleep was commonly associated with fatigue, with child sleep disturbance and child sleep hygiene associated with parent-rated and self-rated child fatigue, respectively. Individually, there were no cases of "normal" fatigue coinciding with severe sleep disturbance. However, there were several cases of severe fatigue coinciding with normal sleep. Additional factors associated with fatigue were older age at injury, longer time since injury, and/or greater internalizing difficulties.

Conclusion: Children with moderate and severe TBI experience greater fatigue than OI controls. Parent and child ratings of fatigue appear to be associated with different factors, indicating that fatigue management may require a broad range of treatments.