Head injuries in prehospital and Emergency Department settings: a prospective multicenter cross-sectional study in France

Head injuries in prehospital and Emergency Department settings: a prospective multicenter cross-sectional study in France

Head injuries are the leading cause of trauma in Emergency Departments (EDs). Recent studies have shown epidemiological changes in patients consulting ED for head injuries. The main objective of this study was to describe the profile of head injury patients consulting in the EDs in France and assess i) head injury severity across age groups; ii) the delay between the occurrence of head injury and ED arrival; iii) factors associated with traumatic intracranial hemorrhage (ICH).

Among the 71 participating EDs, 26,008 patients visited EDs and a total of 1070 patients (4.1%, IC 95 3.9—4.4) presented a head injury were included in the study, with a median age of 68.5 [37–85] years old. Most of the patients (66.7%) were referred to ED after a call to the Emergency Medical Dispatcher (EMD). The median time from head injury to ED visit was 2 h [1.0 – 5.5]. Ground-level falls were the leading cause of head injury (60.3%). Most of patient presented a simple head trauma (n = 715, 66.8%) followed by mild TBI (n = 337, 31.5%). CT head scans were performed for 636 patients (59.6%), of which 58 were positive. Traumatic ICH prevalence was 5.4% (95% CI: 4.1–6.9) and three patients (0.3%) required an urgent neurosurgical intervention. Neither preinjury anticoagulant (p = 0.97) nor antiplatelet (p = 0.93) use was associated with an increased risk of traumatic ICH.

Xavier Dubucs, Thomas Lafon, Romain Adam, Solene Loth, Flore Tabaka, Florian Negrello, Mustapha Sebbane, Valerie Boucher, Eric Mercier, Marcel Émond, Sandrine Charpentier, Frederic Balen & EPI-TC IRU SFMU group

https://bmcemergmed.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12873-024-01124-5

BMC Emergency Medicine

29 oktober 2024

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