Subjective posttraumatic syndrome. A comparison of visual and brain stem auditory evoked responses

Evoked responses testing including pattern visual evoked potentials (VEPs) and brain stem auditory evoked potentials (BAEPs) were performed in 57 subjects suffering from subjective posttraumatic syndrome (SPTS). 36 of them had loss of consciousness after head injury. Abnormalities were found in 12 subjects out of 57 (21%). In addition, the pathological findings by percentage were: 25% in subjects who had loss of consciousness after head injury (9 cases out of 36) and 14% in subjects without loss of consciousness (3 cases out of 21). Evoked response alterations were more frequent in subjects with frontal and/or occipital trauma; BAEP abnormalities were found to be more frequent than VEPs. Our findings suggest that evoked responses testing could be a useful noninvasive technique to evidence an organic dysfunction of CNS in some subjects with SPTS.