Clinical Characteristics And Outcomes Of Traumatic Brianinjury In Jimma University Medical Center Emergency Department, Jimma, Southwest Ethiopia.

Abstract

Background: Traumatic brain injury is a staggering health issue that imposes serious threats and medical concerns to public health not only in Ethiopia but also worldwide. As defined by The Working Group on Demographics and Clinical Assessment of the International Interagency Initiative Toward Common Data Elements for Research in traumatic brain injury and Psychological Health, TBI is “an alteration of brain function, or an evidence of brain pathology, that is caused by an external force. They are commonly encountered surgical problem in emergency department and a common cause of morbidity and mortality necessitating a study on their prevalence and clinical characteristics. Objectives: Primary aim of this study is to assess, clinical characteristics and outcomes of Traumatic Brain Injury patients at Jimma University Medical Center. Methods: An institution based cross sectional study was conducted on all patients visiting Jimma University Medical Center from February 1,2014 to July 30, 2014 who sustain Traumatic Injury to Brain. Data was collected using structured questionnaires from patient charts over 6 months’ period. Data was entered and analyzed using SPSS version 24. Descriptive analysis will be used to describe the data while multivariate regression analysis was applied to determine the association between dependent and independent variable. A pvalue <0.05 was considered significant. Tables and figures were used to describe the results. Result and conclusion: A total of 239 trauma victims’ registries were reviewed and included for analysis. The mean and (SD) of the age of the victims was 18 ±13.7 years. Young ages and male gender were most affected with male to female ratio of 4 to 1. The major cause of TBI was road traffic injury (n=61, 25.5%). 67.4 % of the total patients had traumatic brain CT findings and 68 (28.5%) skull bone fracture (linear, BSF&DSF) was the commonest. Concerning management outcome of TBI patients 97.1% were discharged and mechanism of injury, duration of time to reach ED, GCS at admission, type of intervention given, and length of in the ED were independent factors associated with unfavorable out- comes and found to have statistically significant association with the outcome.