Functional recovery of working-age patients with traumatic brain injury stratified in 30-day periods since head trauma to rehabilitation admission.

We stratified 213 patients with traumatic brain injury according to their time to rehabilitation admission in three groups (0-30 days, 31-60 and 61-90) in order to (1) compare total Functional Independence Measure efficiency and effectiveness between groups; (2) analyze time to admission as predictor of TFIM at discharge. After adjusting for age, Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS), Disability Rating Scale (DRS) and sex, 0-30 had the highest TFIM efficiency compared with 31-60 (P < 0.001) and 61-90 (P < 0.001), 31-60 was quasi-significantly (P = 0.051) higher than 61-90. After adjusting for age, GCS, DRS and sex, 0-30 had the highest TFIM mean effectiveness when compared with 31-60 (P = 0.004) and 61-90 (P < 0.001). Thirty-one to 60 was significantly higher (P = 0.041) than 61-90. Almost half of the variance was explained by regression models containing time to admission as predictor of TFIM at discharge. Time to admission was key to obtain significant differences in TFIM efficiency, effectiveness and in predicting TFIM at discharge.