The Influence of Nosocomial Pneumonia on Outcome of Severely Head-Injured Patients

Abstract

As the outcome of most patients suffering from severe head injury is determined by the primary brain lesion itself, numerous studies have focussed on the type and severity of this lesion as predictors of outcome in this patient group. On the other hand, it is widely known that severe head injury may be followed by many extracranial complications [1,2]. However, little attention has been paid to the question of how these complications influence outcome, and what patient groups are at particular risk [12]. To answer these questions, we studied a subgroup of patients from the Traumatic Coma Data Bank (TCDB) [9] with special regard to the role of nosocomial pneumonia.KeywordsUnfavorable OutcomeNosocomial PneumoniaSevere Head InjuryIntracranial ComplicationStepwise Logistic Regression ModelThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.