observational study of the brainscope® ahead™ m-100 in uk emergency department patients with head injury

Conditions: Brain Injuries; Craniocerebral Trauma

Summary: the purpose of the current study is proposed to prospectively assess how accurately the brainscope® ahead™ m-100 can distinguish risk categories for acute head injury.

one million patients attend emergency departments (ed) with head injuries each year in the united kingdom (uk) and ireland. 150,000 of these patients will need hospital admission and one study estimates an incidence of 45-48% moderate or severe disability in those surviving admission. although the incidence of head injury is high, the incidence of death from head injury is low. therefore ed's are required to see a large number of patients with a minor/mild head injury, and identify the very small number of these that will go on to have serious complications. the challenge to the emergency medicine clinician is identifying which patients with a head injury have an important brain injury that requires further attention and which patients can be safely sent home. the standard for determining an important brain injury is the result on the computerised tomography (ct) scan of the head. ct scanning is nonportable and exposes individuals to high radiation levels. the study medical device is a portable, point of care, noninvasive and non radiation-emitting medical device designed to assist clinicians in early identification, staging, and optimisation of treatment for patients who are head injured.

Eligibility criteria:
inclusion criteria: * males and females ages 18 to 80 (the entire age range), who are admitted to the emergency department (ed), who are suspected of a traumatically induced structural brain injury and/or clinical manifestations of functional brain injury, as a result of insult to the head from an external force, e.g., the head being struck by an object, the head striking an object, the head being exposed to forces generated from a blast or explosion, and/or the brain undergoing an acceleration/deceleration movement without direct external trauma to the head with a glasgow coma scale of \>8. the acute, suspected traumatically induced structural brain injury and/or clinical manifestations of functional brain injury will have occurred within the past 24 hours upon admission to the ed. * the 'head injured' control group will be males and females ages 18 to 80 (the entire age range), who are admitted to the ed and are suspected or who have sustained a head injury but do not report or manifest symptoms, e.g. facial lacerations and/or whiplash. * the ed normal control group will be males and females ages 18 to 80 (the entire age range), who are admitted to the ed for presenting complaints that do not involve the head or neck (no trauma above the clavicles) and no history of road traffic accident requiring an ed visit or tbi within the last one (1) year and no primary complaint of syncope. exclusion criteria: * subjects will be excluded who have forehead, scalp, or skull abnormalities or other conditions that would prevent correct application of the electrode headset on the skin. in addition, subjects with dementia, parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis, seizure disorder, brain tumours, history of brain surgery, psychiatric disorder for which there is a prescribed psychiatric medication taken on a daily basis, substance dependence, history of tia or stroke within the last year, currently receiving dialysis or in end-stage renal disease, active fever defined as greater than 100 degrees f or 37.7 degrees c, current condition is listed as "critical", subject is suffering from an open head injury, subject requires advanced airway management (i.e. mechanical ventilation), currently receiving procedural sedation medications (e.g. benzodiazepine, anaesthetic, nmda receptor antagonist, or opioid agonist), subjects below the age of 18 years, pregnant women, and prisoners will not be eligible for study. ed normal control subjects will be excluded if there is a suspected neck injury or trauma above the clavicles, a primary complaint of generalized weakness, or a primary complaint of headache or migraine.

Keywords: head injuries head trauma tbi (traumatic brain injury) emergency department accident & emergency