Predictive Factors and the Role of Traumatic Brain Injury in Stroke.

Abstract

Background: Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is the leading cause of mortality and invalidity worldwide. Objective: To explore whether traumatic brain injury may be a risk factor for subsequent stroke and to evaluate the role of other risk factors correlated with TBI and stroke. Methods: We analysed 643 patients presented in the emergency department of Trauma UHC, from 1stof June 2011 - 1st of December 2011. We evaluated the following factors: age, gender, and severity of head trauma, type of head trauma, systemic hypertension, atrial fibrillation, and diabetes mellitus. Results: During 1-year of follow upperiod 32 (4.97%) strokes occurred in TBI patients. The evaluation was done in correlation with the other risk factors taken into account in the study. Conclusions: The role of TBI is underestimated in the evaluation of stroke. This study demonstrated that during the first year after TBI, 13.53 % of patients experienced stroke. After careful statistical cor-relations with the selected co-morbidities, we found that the diagnosis of stroke was strongly related with TBI.

Keywords

• stroke
• traumatic brain injury
• risk faktors