Introduction: Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a leading cause of mortality, morbidity, disability, and socioeconomic losses in the Indian subcontinent. However, for policymaking and research, there is a lack of reliable and larger data in our settings.
Aims and objectives: To evaluate and describe the epidemiological, clinical characteristics, and outcomes of patients with TBI in a Level 1 Trauma Center in India.
Materials and methods: In this retrospective study, all patients with moderate or severe TBI, based on emergency department Glasgow Coma Scale, admitted to neurosurgery Intensive Care Unit (ICU) during May 2010-July 2012 were evaluated to provide detailed information on TBI-related variables and outcomes using descriptive statistics.
Results: Among the 1527 patients with moderate or severe TBI patients with mean age 32.15 ± 16.76 years (range: 1-90) and male:female ratio 6.5:1, 1281 (83.89%) had severe TBI. The majority of cases took place in the age group of 21-40 years (50.24%) with the most common mode of injury as road traffic accidents (RTAs) (64.96%). Surgical intervention (craniotomy) was done in 49.12% of patients. About 34.58% (n = 528) patients died in hospital, and 67.21% (n = 701) had unfavorable outcome at 6 months.
Conclusions: This is the first study of its kind from the Indian subcontinent that gives data on the admission characteristics, mortality, and 6 months outcome of such patients. Most of the injuries occurred due to RTAs, more common among the economic productive age groups and mostly in males with a high rate of mortality and unfavorable outcome.
Keywords: Epidemiology; Glasgow Outcome Scale; mortality; outcome; traumatic brain injury.