Brain Injury Lawyer

I have just received the December 2006 issue of the Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology, the official journal of the National Academy of Neuropsychology. I found in that issue an exceptionally interesting article entitled Potential for Interpretation Disparities of Halstead-Reitan Neuropsychological Battery Performances in a Litigating Sample by Christine L. Yantz, Brandon E. Gavett, Julia K. Lynch and Robert J. McCaffrey. The authors reviewed the performances of 110 litigants on seven variables from the Halstead-Reitan neuropsychological battery (HRNB) and compared the Heaton, Miller, Taylor and Grant (2004) deficits scale against Reitan and Wolfson's (1993) neuropsychological deficit scale. The researchers interestingly found that the two scoring systems were not equivalent with Heaton et al's deficit scale resulting in consistently higher identification rates of normal brain functioning compared to those generated from Reitan and Wolfson's NDS system.

The implications of this study are quite obvious. Interpretation of neuropsychological test findings utilizing Heaton's norms will result in more litigants being classified as normal by the use of Reitan's norms will result in a higher percentage of those litigants being classified as having sustained a traumatic brain injury. This is an issue which will have to be recognized by both plaintiffs and defendants counsel in representing and litigating cases involving persons sustaining traumatic brain injury.