The Perelman School of Medicine has found a strategy to significantly improve the odds of recovery for patients with head injuries, Penn Medicine News reported.
The Medical School found that those with head injuries have a much higher chance of recovery if taken to a designated trauma center even though 44 percent of these patients are currently taken to hospitals without specialized care facilities.
This discovery was a result of the largest-ever study of its kind, which was published in March in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons. The study used the State Emergency Department and Inpatient Databases from six states, researching cases from 2011-2012.
“These findings highlight a big opportunity to improve outcomes for head injury patients,” the study’s senior author and Emergency Medicine and Epidemiology professor M. Kit Delgado said to Penn Medicine News. “Regional trauma centers were set up to serve patients like these, but clearly many of them are still ending up in hospitals that may not have protocols, resources, and experience to appropriately treat these severe injuries.”
The researchers analyzed two groups: those aged under 65, and those 65 and older. The former group experienced a higher rate of being favorably discharged at a trauma center vs. a non-trauma center. The latter group experienced a 3.4 percent lower risk of death at trauma centers vs. non-trauma centers.
Based on this information, emergency services can achieve better results by increasing efforts to take patients with head injuries directly to trauma centers.
According to the Center for Disease Control, 1.7 million Americans sustain a head injury per year, 52,000 of which prove fatal. In 2000, the medical and indirect costs of brain injuries totaled 60 billion dollars.
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