Hicks Amelia J, Selmanovic Enna, Pruyser Ariel, Trentman Carley R, Klein Joshua C, Wilkey Kaitlyn, Escalon Miguel X, Bernal-Fernández Natalia, Yew Belinda, Dams-O'Connor Kristen
Department of Rehabilitation and Human Performance, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York, USA.
Nash Family Department of Neuroscience, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, New York, USA.
Neurotrauma Rep. 2025 Aug 5;6(1):624-637. doi: 10.1177/08977151251362180. eCollection 2025.
Recent investments in large-scale mortem tissue collection have accelerated opportunities to understand the neuropathology of traumatic brain injury (TBI) and post-traumatic neurodegeneration (PTND). Clinicopathological correlation requires ante-mortem clinical information. Post-mortem family interviews (PFIs) are an established method to capture comprehensive ante-mortem clinical information. The aim of this report was to summarize our experience of using the PFI in the Late Effects of TBI (LETBI) brain donor program to facilitate replication, expansion, and refinement of PFI methods in TBI brain donor programs. We describe the content development and structure of the LETBI PFI; interviewer training and qualifications; and considerations regarding interview duration, informant selection, and interview timing, as well as PFI inter-rater reliability. We also compare the information captured in the PFI with data abstracted from the medical records for 34 decedents in the LETBI brain donor program to illustrate the complementarity of these approaches and highlight the unique contributions of the PFI. The PFI can provide granular details about a decedent's clinical history and symptom trajectories over time, potential contributing factors to PTND including social determinants of health (e.g., race and years of education), family history of medical and psychiatric conditions, and contextual information regarding cause(s) of death. The PFI is an important component of a multi-modal autopsy that provides unique insights essential for clinical-pathological correlation investigations of chronic TBI and PTND neuropathology.
近期对大规模尸检组织收集的投资加快了了解创伤性脑损伤（TBI）和创伤后神经退行性变（PTND）神经病理学的机会。临床病理相关性需要生前临床信息。死后家庭访谈（PFI）是获取全面生前临床信息的既定方法。本报告的目的是总结我们在TBI后期影响（LETBI）脑捐赠项目中使用PFI的经验，以促进TBI脑捐赠项目中PFI方法的复制、扩展和完善。我们描述了LETBI PFI的内容开发和结构；访谈者培训和资质；以及关于访谈时长、信息提供者选择、访谈时间的考虑因素，以及PFI评分者间信度。我们还将PFI中获取的信息与LETBI脑捐赠项目中34名死者病历摘要中的数据进行比较，以说明这些方法的互补性，并突出PFI的独特贡献。PFI可以提供关于死者临床病史和随时间变化的症状轨迹、PTND的潜在促成因素（包括健康的社会决定因素，如种族和受教育年限）、医疗和精神疾病家族史以及关于死因的背景信息的详细细节。PFI是多模式尸检的重要组成部分，为慢性TBI和PTND神经病理学的临床病理相关性研究提供了至关重要的独特见解。
