Prognostic values of routine clinical tests in adult patients with traumatic brain injury

Objective: To determine the prognostic impacts of the characteristics in routine plasma and blood tests for patients with traumatic brain injury (TBI).

Methods: A total of 136 consecutive adult patients with TBI were recruited. Blood and plasma routine tests were performed within 24 hours after admission. All patients were briefly followed up at the third month after discharge. We analyzed the prognostic factors with univariate and multifactor logistic regression models in the patients receiving surgical conservative treatments, respectively.

Results: We found different prognostic factors in the patients receiving diverse treatments. In the patients receiving surgical treatment, infection is the only influencing factor, while in the patients receiving conservative treatment, age (p = 0.004), white blood cell (WBC) (p = 0.008) and albumin (p = 0.040) were the independent factors of prognosis. In the receiver operator characteristic analysis, the values of area under the curve of these factors were 0.788 for age, 0.695 for WBC, and 0.709 for albumin, respectively. The combined AUC of the 3 factors was 0.898.

Conclusions: TBI patients receiving diverse treatments might have different pathophysiological conditions and different influencing factors of prognosis.