BACKGROUND The Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) is popular, simple, and reliable, and provides information about the level of consciousness in trauma patients. Nevertheless, the necessity of using a more complex system than GCS has been questioned recently. The revised Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation system (APACHE II) is a physiologically based system including 12 physiological variable...

Auditory brain-stem responses (ABRs) were studied in 66 subjects with severe head trauma. Middle latency responses (MLRs) were also recorded in 22 of them. Patients were carefully selected to avoid conditions such as pre-existing or acute deafness, hypothermia or ethanol intoxication. In order to evaluate the usefulness of potentials in predicting recovery, patients were classified according to...

Cerebral disorders are often associated with disturbance of consciousness. Since the latter could alter the prognosis of physical function, early improvement of consciousness level is important. The present study tested the hypothesis that sitting position improves disturbances of consciousness in patients with cerebral disorders. The subjects were 17 patients with cerebral disorders and distur...

A 41-year-old male presented with carbon monoxide (CO) exposure. The patient’s Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) score was 9. Dual-energy CT (DECT) revealed a perfusion defect on the bilateral globus pallidus (Figure 1a). The patient was intubated and immediately underwent hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT). In addition to normobaric oxygen therapy, two sessions on the first day and one session each on th...

OBJECTIVE In bacterial meningitis, a decreased level of consciousness is predictive for unfavorable outcome, but the clinical features and outcome in patients presenting with a minimal score on the Glasgow Coma Scale are unknown. METHODS We assessed the incidence, clinical characteristics, and outcome of patients with bacterial meningitis presenting with a minimal score on the Glasgow Coma Sc...

Aim: The interest of inflammatory marker increased in the last years, even in preventing clinical outcome after subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH). Our objective was to study the relationships between C-reactive protein levels and clinical outcome and the development of cerebral vasospasm after aneurismal SAH. Methods: One hundred adult patients with aneurismal SAH were prospectively evaluated. Glas...

Abbreviations: APACHE: Acute Physiology and Cronic Health Evaluation; CAPS: Clinician Administered PTSD Scale; DTS: Davidson Trauma Scale; GCS: Glasgow Coma Scale; HADS: Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale; HRQoL: Health Related Quality of Life; IES: Impact of Events Scale; IES-R: Impact of Events Scale-Revised; ICU: Intensive Care Unit; ISS: Injury Severity Score; LOS: length of Stay; MV: Me...

Otogenic intracranial infections usually require both neurosurgical and otolaryngological surgery. This prospective, non-randomized study investigated the value of combining both surgical procedures. Thirteen patients with otogenic intracranial abscess were treated by mastoidectomy and abscess removal through the same incision between 1993 and 2002. Another 12 patients underwent abscess removal...

The fact that injuries caused by accidents are the most common cause of death in children and adolescents in Germany gave rise to the study, which mainly deals with traffic accidents in this group. 200,221 records of emergency-service physicians in Bavaria which cover the period 1995-1999 were analysed with respect to the importance of traumatic brain injury (TBI) in children and adolescents (n...

BACKGROUND The aims of this study were to evaluate the predictive value of admission Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) scores, duration of unconsciousness, neurosurgical intervention, and countercoup lesion on the impairment of memory and processing speed functions six months after a traumatic brain injury (TBI) based on a structural equation modeling. METHODS Thirty TBI patients recruited from Neuros...