Women in their senior years and who have been hospitalized for longer periods: these are the patients with worse prognosis among those who suffer some type of trauma, whether they have had a head trauma or not. This is the conclusion of a study developed by researchers from CINTESIS – Center for Health Technology and Services Research, published on the journal Brain Injury.
The authors of this study are Joana Berger-Estilita and Cristina Granja, researchers at CINTESIS/University Hospital Center of Algarve, and also Hernâni Gonçalves, Cláudia Camila Dias and Altamiro da Costa Pereira, also researchers at this Unit, and with the collaboration of the researchers Irene Aragão, from the University Hospital Center of Porto, and Lotti Orwelius, from the Linköping University, in Sweden.
From a database of about 700 trauma patients aged 13 to 100 years, the authors analyzed the characteristics of 262 survivors in the six months following trauma.
The objective was to determine the influence of gender, age, type of trauma and duration of hospitalization on disability, cognition (attention, memory and verbal component) and quality of life (mobility, self-care, habitual activities, pain / discomfort anxiety / depression).
the researchers found that about half of the survivors have a marked disability, with moderate to severe cognitive problems and a poor quality of life. The patients with the worst prognosis are mainly females in their senior years and who have spent longer periods in the intensive care unit (ICU) and in hospital.
In this work, the research group also developed the GHOST score (Global Health Outcome Score after Trauma), the first to identify trauma survivors who will have a predicted worse diagnosis regardless of the trauma suffered.
The application of this new score may enable health professionals to better understand the needs of these patients and to plan the most suitable rehabilitation after hospitalization in Intensive Care and hospital discharge.