Journal of neurosurgery
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Journal of neurosurgery · Dec 2014
Multicenter StudyValidation of a prognostic score for early mortality in severe head injury cases.
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) represents a large health and economic burden. Because of the inability of previous randomized controlled trials (RCTs) on TBI to demonstrate the expected benefit of reducing unfavorable outcomes, the IMPACT (International Mission on Prognosis and Analysis of Clinical Trials in TBI) and CRASH (Corticosteroid Randomisation After Significant Head Injury) studies provided new methods for performing prognostic studies of TBI. This study aimed to develop and externally validate a prognostic model for early death (within 48 hours). The secondary aim was to identify patients who were more likely to succumb to an early death to limit their inclusion in RCTs and to improve the efficiency of RCTs. ⋯ The combination of Glasgow Coma Scale score, CT scanning results, and secondary insult data into a prognostic score improved the prediction of early death and the classification of TBI patients.