Page 118 - DECISION-MAKING IN SEVERE TRAUMATIC BRAIN INJURY PATIENT OUTCOME, HOSPITAL COSTS, AND RESEARCH PRACTICE

Chapter 5
Statistical methods
Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. Baseline data were presented as absolute numbers and percentages. Continuous variables, like LOS and costs, were presented as mean ± standard deviation or median (interquartile range 25-75). Subgroups were made using age, TBI severity, pupillary abnormalities, intracranial abnormalities, surgical intervention and outcome. ANOVA and χ2 were used for comparison of continuous and categorical variables across different subgroups. A p-value of <0.05 was considered statistically significant. All analyses were performed using IBM’s statistical package for social sciences version 25.0 (SPSS). Figures were designed using GraphPad Prism 8.
RESULTS
A total of 486 patients with TBI were included in this study. Patients had a mean age of 56.1±22.4 years and were predominantly male (60.5%). (Table 1) Nearly all patients sustained a closed head injury (98.4%). TBI was mainly caused by incidental falls (54.3%) or road traffic accidents (36.2%) and occurred on streets (56.2%) or at home (31.5%). The mean baseline GCS was 12.7 ± 3.8 and mean injury severity score (ISS) was 20 ± 16. Patients sustained mild TBI (N=354, 72.8%), moderate TBI (N=43, 8.8%) and severe TBI (N=78, 16.1%), of which 51 were very severe (10.5%). Loss to follow-up was 14.2% and not significantly different between severity groups.
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