This month’s Journal of Mental Disability 2005 contained an interesting article by Levin and Colleagues comparing the characteristics and outcome of patients diagnosed with post concussional disorder under the provisionally proposed criteria in the DSM-IV and patients diagnosed with post concussional syndrome utilizing the international classification of diseases, tenth edition clinical criteria.

The study looked at 340 patients (319 classified as mild and 21 classified as moderate) at three-months post injury. Despite the markedly different incident rates between the two criteria, the authors found “no substantial pattern of differences between the DSM-IV and ICD-10 in the outcome domains of psychiatric symptoms and disorders, social and community integration, health-related quality of life or global outcome as measured by the Glasgo Coma-Extended.

The authors concluded that there was no compelling evidence to suggest which of the two diagnostic criteria sets should be clinically preferred based on these outcome domains. (“Post Concussional Disorder: Are the DSM-IV criteria an improvement over the ICD-10?” J. Ner v. Ment Dis. 2005 Aug; 193 (a): 540-550)