Ocular Motor Nerve Palsy After Traumatic Brain Injury: A Claims Database Study

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is one of the common causes of ocular motor nerve (oculomotor nerve [CN3], trochlear nerve [CN4], and abducens nerve [CN6]) palsies, but there has been no large study of ocular motor nerve palsy caused by TBI. This study aimed to investigate the characteristics of and differences in ocular motor nerve palsy after TBI, according to patient age and severity of TBI.

This was a population-based retrospective cohort study that included patients who had ocular motor nerve palsy after TBI with ≥6 months of continuous enrollment using claims data from the IBM MarketScan Research Databases (2007-2016). We assessed sex, age at the first diagnosis of TBI, the severity of TBI, and the rates of strabismus procedures according to the age and severity of TBI. The rates of muscle transposition surgery and chemodenervation in CN3, CN4, and CN6 palsy were investigated.

A total of 2,606,600 patients with TBI met the inclusion criteria. Among them, 1,851 patients (0.071%) had ocular motor nerve palsy after TBI. The median age of the patients was 39 (Q1-Q3: 19-54) years, and 42.4% of the patients were female. The median continuous enrollment period after the first diagnosis of TBI was 22 (Q1-Q3: 12-38) months. Of the 1,350,843 children with TBI, 454 (0.026%) had ocular motor nerve palsy. Of the 1,255,757 adults with TBI, 1,397 (0.111%) had ocular motor nerve palsy. Among these 1,851 patients, CN4 palsy (697, 37.7%) occurred most frequently, and strabismus procedures were performed in 237 patients (12.8%). CN6 palsy developed most frequently in children. More children (16.5%) underwent strabismus surgeries than adults (11.6%) ( P = 0.006). The proportion of CN4 palsy (52.3%) was higher while the proportion of CN3 palsy (15.5%) was lower in patients with mild TBI than in patients with moderate-to-severe TBI ( P < 0.001).

CN4 palsy developed most frequently among patients of all ages, and only approximately 13% of the patients underwent strabismus procedures for ocular motor nerve palsy after TBI. The rate of development of ocular motor nerve palsy was approximately 4.3 times lower in children than adults, and children most frequently had CN6 palsy after TBI.