Role of Hyperglycemia on Outcomes of Traumatic Brain Injury among Patients Admitted in Tertiary Level Hospital

Various factors contribute to unfavorable outcomes of Traumatic Brain Injuries (TBI) and hyperglycemia is one of them. It occurs frequently at an early stage after having traumatic brain injuries and previous studies have identified that hyperglycemic patients encounter worse outcomes in terms of disability and death. Objectives: To determine the association of hyperglycemia to prognosis of traumatic brain injury patients with distinct blood glucose levels and co-morbidities. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted from June 2022 to October 2022 at Liaquat University Hospital, Hyderabad on 171 young to middle aged participants, admitted patients of TBI with GCS scores 3-13 selected through purposive sampling technique. Data were collected on a multi-sectioned questionnaire and analyzed by SPSS version 26.0. The results were analyzed by chi-square test at p=≤0.05 as the cut-off level of significance. Results: 44.4% of participants were hyperglycemic. Four times greater mortality rate was recorded in hyperglycemic patients as compared to normoglycemic patients. No patient could survive who had hyperglycemia at 72 hours of injury. Hyperglycemia at 24 hours as well as at 72 hours of TBI was significantly associated to poor prognosis (p<0.01). Conclusions: Hyperglycemia at 24 hours of injury resulted in four times greater mortality as compared to normoglycemic TBI victims, therefore blood glucose level should be maintained between 70-180 mg/dl for a favorable outcome of TBI. Moreover, patients with persistent hyperglycemia and comorbidities of hypertension, diabetes mellitus, and ischemic heart disease have shown more tragic outcomes of TBI so it should be investigated on a large scale sample size in different populations