Time to death and its predictors among traumatic brain injury patients admitted to East Amhara comprehensive specialized hospitals, Ethiopia: retrospective cohort study.

Background: Globally, 64-74 million individuals around the world are estimated to sustain traumatic brain injury every year. Moderate and severe traumatic brain injury can lead to a lifetime physical, cognitive, emotional, and behavioral changes. There were limited studies conducted in Ethiopia regarding to traumatic brain injury mortality.

Methods: An institutional based retrospective cohort study was conducted on 429 randomly selected traumatic brain injury patients aged 18 to 64 years who were admitted to East Amhara Comprehensive Specialized Hospitals from January 1, 2016 to December 31, 2021. Kobo toolbox was applied for data collection and exported to Stata version 17 for data processing and analysis. To estimate death free time, a Kaplan Meier failure curve was used. The Cox proportional hazards regression model was used at the 5% level of significance to determine effect of predictor variables on time to death.

Result: A total of 429 traumatic brain injury patients aged 18 to 64 years were included with response rate of 91.3% and 145(33.8%) were dead. Open injuries (AHR = 0.25; 95% CI: 0.18-0.36), co-existing injuries (AHR = 0.40; 95% CI: 0.24-0.66), ICU admission (AHR = 0.42; 95% CI: 0.29-0.60), arrival within 4-24 h (AHR = 3.48; 95% CI: 2.01-6.03), arrival after 24 h (AHR = 6.69; 95% CI: 3.49-12.28), subdural hematoma (AHR = 2.72; 95% CI: 1.77-4.19), serum albumin < 3.5 g/dL (AHR = 0.66; 95% CI: 0.49-0.94), moderate (AHR = 0.56; 95% CI: 0.21-0.89), and mild traumatic brain injury (AHR = 0.43; 95% CI: 0.29-0.56) were predictors of traumatic brain injury mortality.

Conclusion: The finding of this study showed that the mortality was 1/3rd of the total patients. Open injuries, co-existing injuries, ICU admission, arrival time (4-24 h and > 24 h), subdural hematoma, serum albumin < 3.5 g/dL and severity of traumatic brain injury (mild and moderate) were predictors of traumatic brain mortality. Therefore, working on these factors to reduce the morality of traumatic brain injury patients is very important.