Characteristics of Traumatic Brain Injury Patients in the Province of Vojvodina: Impact of CENTER-TBI Study

Introduction Traumatic brain injury (TBI) represents significant burden in emergency rooms, and it is one of the major health problems worldwide. As a part of large European CENTER-TBI study, Clinic of Neurosurgery, Clinical Center of Vojvodina, Novi Sad is in obligation to run a registry with all TBI patients. This newly added task represents no particular problem for well-trained personnel but can be important input for further development of complete neurotraumatological service in our country.

Aim The purpose of our study was to show basic characteristics of TBI patients treated at our institution in a short period of time, and how additional data collection can improve understanding of common problems we are dealing with daily.

Materials and Methods We prospectively collected and analyzed demographic, clinical, and radiology data for group of first 105 consecutive TBI patients treated at our institution and added in CENTER-TBI registry during June and July 2015.

Results In the analyzed group of patients, 70.5% were male and 29.5% were female; the average age was 55.7 years (SD = 18.75). The percentage of patients injured in road traffic accidents and standing height falls was 27.6%; 25.7% were injured in falls from height, and assaults were mechanism of injury in 18.1% of patients. According to Glasgow Coma Scale score (GCS) at admission, 73.4% of patients had mild TBI, 11.4% moderate TBI, and 15.2% severe TBI. Initial head CT scan in 49.5% of patients showed pathological findings. Brain contusions has been found in 22 patients and acute subdural hematoma, traumatic subarachnoid hemorrhage, skull fracture, and extradural hematoma in 18, 7, 6, and 3 patients, respectively. We admitted in hospital 59% of patients (38% at ward and 21% at intensive care unit), and 41% of patients required no hospital treatment. In 10.5% of patients, operative neurosurgical treatment has been indicated. Average duration of hospitalization were 6.1 days (SD = 5.1). Overall mortality in analyzed group was 8%.

Conclusion Although emergency rooms are well known for high level of personnel engagement, we strongly believe that an additional effort to obtain high-quality data can really improve organization of our neurotraumatological service. This broad spectrum of data can point out actual problems and indicate possible insufficiency in health care system which should be proper way to improvement. All those positive efforts should provide the best possible and standardized treatment for our patients.

Keywords traumatic brain injury; characterization; treatment