Correlations Between the Glasgow Score and the Survival Period in Patients with Severe Traumatic Brain Injury

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) contributes by 30% to the mortality induced by traumatic injuries, also being one of the major causes of invalidity worldwide. The clinical classification of the severity of mild, moderate or severe TBI is made according to the Glasgow scale, according to the patient’s conscious state, motric changes, speech changes and eye opening. In our study, we evaluated the correlation between the Glasgow score at admission and the survival period of patients suffering from TBI, using the data recorded in the Forensic Medicine Institute of Craiova between 2011-2017 on 1005 cases with the diagnosis of death by TBI. We observed that TBI affects persons of all ages, starting from babies up to the elderly aged over 90 years old. Regarding the generation mechanism, most deaths were caused by fallings (438 cases, 43.58%), followed by car accidents (333 cases, representing 33.13%). The number of patients who presented a post-traumatic survival period was 802 (79.80%), of which 779 adults (77.51%) and 23 children (2.29%). Among these, 785 (78.11%-764 adults and 21 children) were hospitalized, while in 64.58% of the TBI patients there was recorded the Glasgow score at admission. 75% of the TBI patients in whom there was recorded the Glasgow score presented a 1st-4th coma degree, with a Glasgow score from 3 to 8 and only 25% had a slightly altered or preserved conscious state, with a Glasgow score=9-15. The survival period varied from less than 24 hours to over 15 days. In the hospitalized patients, there were performed emergency surgeries in 269 (26.76%) cases, the surgical intervention being temporized in 108 (10.74%) patients.