ABSTRACT
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a major cause of death and disability in both children and adults in the most productive years of their lives. In the United States an estimated 1.7 million traumatic brain injuries occur every year and account for 275,000 hospitalizations and over 50,000 deaths. It is estimated that these injuries are responsible for leaving over 500,000 individuals with permanent neurological sequelae resulting in an economic burden. Shafi et al. used the national trauma data bank and looked at patients with blunt TBI. They identified 708 patients who underwent Intracranial Pressure (ICP) monitoring and 938 who did not. Multivariate logistic regression was used to determine the relationship between ICP monitoring and survival while controlling for overall injury severity, Only 43% of patients meeting BTF criteria had ICP monitoring. In 2012 Chesnut and colleagues published the results of a large randomized clinical trial in their landmark paper comparing outcomes with and without ICP monitoring.
