Jan 16, 2014 10:05 AM EST By Russell Westerholm, UniversityHerald Reporter

Traumatic brain injuries (TBI), like Michael Schumacher's skiing injury, can cause a person's chance of premature death to triple.

According to a press release, researchers at Oxford University found fatal injury and suicide to be leading causes of premature death following a TBI. Concussions are usually classified as mild TBIs and a single one does not have the same repercussions.

 A TBI is a blow to the head that results in internal bleeding, a skull fracture, loss of consciousness for up to an hour or any mix of these.

"We found that people who survive six months after TBI remain three times more likely to die prematurely than the control population and 2.6 times more likely to die than unaffected siblings," study lead author Dr. Seena Fazel, a Wellcome Trust senior research fellow in psychology at Oxford, said in the release. "Looking at siblings who did not suffer TBIs allows us to control for genetic factors and early upbringing, so it is striking to see that the effect remains strong even after controlling for these."

For the study, the researchers analyzed 218,300 survivors of TBIs and 150,513 siblings of those survivors from Swedish medical records dating back 41 years. They also looked at more than two million control cases matching sex and age with the general population.

Defined as 56 years of age, TBI survivors were found to be three times more likely to die prematurely, especially if the person already had history of substance or alcohol abuse. TBI survivors were most likely to die from suicide or fatal events like a car crash.

In collaboration with the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, the researchers published their work in the journal JAMA Psychiatry.

"When treating traumatic brain injuries focus is placed on immediate treatment and recovery of patients," Dr. John Williams, head of neuroscience and mental health at the Wellcome Trust, said in the release. "This new finding offers important insight into the longer-term impact of TBIs on the brain and their effect on survival later in life. We hope that further research into understanding which parts of the brain are responsible will help improve future management programs and reduce the potential for premature death."

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