Head injuries are badly managed in accident and emergency departments and neurosurgeons are partly to blame

Who cares for the patient with head injury now?

OBJECTIVE

A recent report on head injury management from the Royal College of Surgeons of England suggests that surgeons are unsuited to the inpatient care of head injuries (ICHI) and should hand over responsibility entirely to neurosurgeons and accident and emergency (A&E) specialists. This prompted a survey of A&E consultants to establish their opinions on the current and future practice of head injury care.

METHODS

Questionnaires were sent to consultant members of the British Association for Accident and Emergency medicine. Of a possible 256 A&E departments from Great Britain and Ireland with over 20 000 annual new attenders 206 (80%) replied.

RESULTS

General surgeons contribute to ICHI for adults in 107 of 206 hospitals (52%) compared with orthopaedic surgeons in 73 of 206 (35%) and A&E consultants in 71 of 206 (34%). There was frequent criticism that surgeons are uninterested in head injury care. Fifty nine units (30%) commented on the lack of neurosurgery beds and difficulties experienced in getting patients accepted. Few hospitals seem to have well integrated rehabilitation or follow up services targeted at head injury. One in six patients with head injury admitted to a general hospital or observation ward remain after 48 hours and one in 20 stay beyond one week. Of the 132 A&E units without responsibility for ICHI 54 (41%) either wish to take on this responsibility or are willing to do so if the necessary resources are first put in place. The perceived net revenue cost required to allow 67 A&E units to take on ICHI is about 12.5 million pounds per year. This does not include the cost of further care after 48 hours, follow up or rehabilitation.

CONCLUSION

Only one third of A&E units at present have even part of the ICHI role recommended in the RCS report; another third are prepared to accept a new role if training and resources are provided and support is forthcoming from other specialists to take over the care after 48 hours; the remaining third are unwilling to accept responsibility for ICHI.

Severe head injury: should expected outcome influence resuscitation and first-day decisions?

An early 'prognosis' based on initial findings can influence clinical decisions. To evaluate the quality of first-day outcome prediction based on either clinical or neuroradiological information, we prospectively examined 100 consecutive severely head-injured patients from the surgical intensive care unit. The prognoses were always made by the same experienced neurosurgeon and neuroradiologist according to a contracted Glasgow Outcome Scale (GOS). Every patient's outcome was predicted according to a three-class GOS within 24 h after injury. Correct 'first-day' prognoses were made in 59 and 56% of the cases by the neuroradiologist and neurosurgeon, respectively. In those instances where the prognoses made by the clinician and the radiologist coincided, the prognoses were correct for 73% of the patients. Based on accepted criteria, the neuroradiologist tended to overpredict favorable outcomes and missed many of the unfavorable outcomes (dead or vegetative) whereas the clinician overestimated unfavorable outcomes. Our study showed that outcome prognosis of patients with severe head injury has limited accuracy when made within 24 h after the injury, although an improvement in accuracy occurred when there was agreement between clinical and radiological predictions. Even with sophisticated clinical and radiological technologies, it is not possible to predict outcome on the first day after the accident with sufficient accuracy to guide early management.

The use of computerized echoencephalography after recent head injury presenting to the accident and emergency department

In a review of the records of 874 head-injured patients who had an echoencephalogram in the Accident and Emergency Department, two patients with apparently 'minor' head injury subsequently developed an extradural haematoma. Both would have been diagnosed earlier if the results of the echoencephalogram had been used to influence their referral to the nearest neurosurgical department before the onset of any neurological deterioration. For those patients who arrive in the Department in coma, failure to detect any midline shift should not delay urgent referral for a CT scan. Such patients may be harbouring either bilateral haematomas or a very large single haematoma causing more than the 14-mm maximum shift recordable by the equipment.

Extradural haematomas: an analysis of the changing characteristics of patients admitted from 1980 to 1986. Diagnostic and therapeutic implications in 158 cases

From January to June 1986, 158 patients with extradural haematoma were admitted to our neurosurgical unit. They were divided into four groups, reflecting their clinical features: A. 46 cases (GCS less than or equal to 12) in whom a condition of coma/stupor had occurred at the time of injury and persisted to the time of surgical decompression; B. 41 cases showing deterioration of consciousness (GCS less than or equal to 12) after a lucid interval; C. 46 cases of 'asymptomatic' patients (GCS consistently greater than or equal to 13, no neurological deficits, no signs of increased intracranial pressure); D. 25 cases arriving at our unit in a conscious state, but restless and/or with neurological deficits. The location of the haematoma (temporal in only 35%), the incidence of associated lesions such as cerebral lacerations and/or subdural effusion (30.3%), and the age of the patients (28.4 +/- 18.4 years were similar in the four groups. The size of the haematoma and the displacement of the midline structures were significantly greater in comatose/stuporose patients (groups A and B). The overall mortality was 12% (19 patients), with a morbidity of 14% (22 patients). Factors statistically significant in determining mortality and morbidity were: degree of coma as assessed by GCS; displacement of midline structures: age of the patient; size of the haematoma. There was no mortality or morbidity in those patients who remained conscious (groups C and D). A pronounced increase in the number of CT examinations performed in patients with head injury in our area of referral has caused profound changes in the population of patients admitted to our centre, resulting in a greater proportion of extradural haematomas detected in patients who are still conscious, and in whom operative mortality and morbidity are negligible. One further therapeutic implication of the increase in the number of patients with EDH admitted while asymptomatic may be the option of conservative management in those patients who remain in a good clinical condition, with haematomas of less than 1 cm in thickness and no displacement of midline structures.