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60th Annual Meeting of the German Society of Neurosurgery (DGNC)
Joint Meeting with the Benelux countries and Bulgaria

German Society of Neurosurgery (DGNC)

24 - 27 May 2009, Münster

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Early magnetic resonance imaging predicts long-term outcome in patients with severe head injury

Meeting Abstract

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  • A. Langejürgen - Klinik für Neurochirurgie, Universitätsklinikum Magdeburg
  • I. Bondar - Klinik für Neurochirurgie, Universitätsklinikum Magdeburg
  • M. Skalej - Institut für Neuroradiologie, Universitätsklinikum Magdeburg
  • R. Firsching - Klinik für Neurochirurgie, Universitätsklinikum Magdeburg

Deutsche Gesellschaft für Neurochirurgie. 60. Jahrestagung der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Neurochirurgie (DGNC), Joint Meeting mit den Benelux-Ländern und Bulgarien. Münster, 24.-27.05.2009. Düsseldorf: German Medical Science GMS Publishing House; 2009. DocMO.02-07

doi: 10.3205/09dgnc007, urn:nbn:de:0183-09dgnc0075

Published: May 20, 2009

© 2009 Langejürgen et al.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/deed.en). You are free: to Share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work, provided the original author and source are credited.

Outline

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Objective: The factors determining long-term outcome in patients with severe traumatic brain injury still remain largely unknown as there are no clinical or neuroradiologic parameters available yet which can reliably predict long-term outcome in these patients. The aim of the present study was the assessment of the value of early magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in predicting duration of coma and long-term outcome in patients with severe traumatic brain injury.

Methods: Early MRI was performed in 162 patients within ten days following severe traumatic head injury. The MRI was analyzed by a neuroradiologist, who was blinded to the clinical findings in these patients. We investigated whether the location and extent of traumatic intracerebral lesions as revealed by early MRI correlates with the duration of coma and the clinical outcome as assessed by the Glasgow outcome score (GOS) one year after brain injury.

Results: Early MRI revealed a strong correlation between the location and extent of lesions of the brain stem and duration of coma as well as GOS one year after traumatic brain injury: 82% of the patients with a one year GOS ≤ 3 showed a traumatic brain stem lesion in the initial early MRI.

Conclusions: The above findings support the hypothesis that duration of coma und long-term outcome following severe head injury is mostly related to a lesion of the brain stem.