Prognostic study of using different monitoring modalities in treating severe traumatic brain injury

OBJECTIVE: To determine whether or not multimodality monitoring technique would result in a better outcome score than single modality monitoring in severely head injured patients. METHODS: This was a prospective randomized study that included all adults with traumatic severe head injury who had a Glasgow Coma Score < 9 and computed tomography scan features that did not reveal significant infratentorial pathology. Subjects were randomized into a multimodality group where they received multiple cerebral monitoring or into a standard single modality group where they received only intracranial pressure monitoring. The outcome was analysed 6 months post treatment using the Barthel Index. RESULTS: The outcome at 6 months post treatment between the two groups was not statistically significant (p < 0.48). However, the percentage of subjects who were independent at 6 months was higher in the multimodality group (21.2%) compared with the single modality group (17.3%). CONCLUSION: Multimodality monitoring for severely head-injured patients has no effect on outcome. However, study with a larger sample size and improvement in groups comparison are required to ascertain the above findings.