A 2-years description of traumatic brain injury admissions in Tikur Anbessa Specialized Hospital

Abstract

Background: Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a nondegenerative, noncongenital insult to the brain from an external mechanical force, possibly leading to permanent or temporary impairment of cognitive, physical, and psychosocial functions, with an associated diminished or altered state of consciousness.This study was aimed at describing the pattern of TBI at TASH during the two- years period.

Methods: This is a hospital based retrospective study of patients with traumatic brain injury admitted to TASH in the period between September 2011 and September 2013. Patients’ demographic data, type and, mechanism of injury, Glasgow Coma Scale, length of hospital stays, complications and outcomes were recorded in a pre-formed questionnaire. Data entry and analysis carried out using SPSS version 20.0. The association between categorical variables was calculated using Chi-square test.

Results: A total of 201 patients were included in the present study. Male-to-female ratio being 12.4:1 with and mean age 36.1. ± SD 16.2 years. Fight accidents were the major contributor of neurotrauma admissions and operations (53.2%). Seventy-One (35.3%) patients had depressed skull fracture followed by acute epidural hematoma seen in 51(25.4 %). Of the 165 operations performed for patients with head injury, 53 (26.4%) were craniotomy and evacuation of hematoma; 55 (27.4%) elevation of the depressed skull fracture, senior resident involvement as a first surgeon accounted for 79.1%.  83.1 % of the admitted patients’ have shown improvement on the time of discharge and 15.4% died while under neurosurgical care and 70.1% the patients had follow- up least once

Conclusion: The preponderance of young patients with head injury involved in a fight injury and motor vehicle accidents has a large impact on society and on the hospital workload

Keywords: Traumatic Brain Injury, Tikur Anbessa Hospital