Injury Characteristics among Traumatic Brain Injury Patients on Admission at a National Teaching and Referral Hospital in Kenya

Abstract

Introduction: Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is one of the leading causes of admissions in hospitals globally. It is associated with significant morbidity and mortality.TBI is a neurosurgical emergency and timely intervention is critical to favorable outcome. Study objective: To determine the injury characteristics among traumatic brain injury patients on admission at a national teaching and referral hospital in Kenya Methodology: A descriptive cross-sectional design was used for this study, with purposive sampling method being adopted. Data was collected from 91 patients with traumatic brain injuries by use of a check list. Results: The results showed that majority of the patients had severe head injury (n=79). There was a significant relationship between age above 40 years, low GCS and severity of brain injury (P= 0.042). There was no significant relationship between severity of brain injury and patients’ gender, marital status and level of education. However occupation yielded a significant association with severe brain injury with casual laborers having the lowest GCS (P=0.042). Conclusion: Majority of patients who had polytrauma had severe TBI at admission.

Key words: Brain Injury, Injury characteristics, Traumatic Injury, Brain injury on admission.