Özet:

Background: Head trauma is an important public health problem that is common seen and may require intensive care follow-up. Despite advanced technologies and intensive treatments, patients with head trauma have poor prognosis and sequelae and/or death have been observed most of these patients. Therefore, it is important to identify high-risk pa-tients with poor prognosis in head trauma. Glasgow coma scale (GCS), injury severity score (ISS) and revised trauma score (RTS) are the most widely used scoring systems for predicting adverse outcomes and clinical decision making in the initial evaluation of patients with head trauma. The aim of our study is to present the clinical characteristics of patients followed in the intensive care unit of our hospital due to head trauma and to determine the effect of used clinical risk scores on in-hospital outcomes. Materials and Methods: A total of 104 patients who were followed up in intensive care unit of our hospital due to head trauma between January 2019 and May 2021 were retrospectively screened and included in our study. Patient files, archive records and hospital automation recording system were examined comprehensively. GCS, ISS and RTS values of all patients were determined and their effects on prognosis were examined. Results: The median age of the patients was 24.5 (12.0-39.8) years and 85 (81.7%) were male. The median GCS was 13 (9.3-15.0), ISS was 25 (25-41), and RTS was 11 (9-12) on admission. The most common cause of head trauma was falls from height in all age categories except the 19-64 age range. However, the most common cause was explosion or gunshot injury (31.4%) in this age group. In-hospital mortality was developed in 16 (15.4%) patients. When compared with patients who did not develop in-hospital mortality, patients who developed mortality had significantly higher ISS values (P<0.001), whereas lower RTS (P<0.001) and GCS (P<0.001) values on admission. The AUC value of RTS (0.968) for predicting in-hospital mortality was found to be higher than the AUC values of ISS (0.947) and GCS (0.866). Conclusions: In our study, the role of the most commonly used risk scores in daily practice for predicting in-hospital mortality was investigated in head trauma patients hospitalized in the intensive care unit. Although all risk scores on admission had a good diagnostic value in predicting high-risk patients with poor in-hospital prognosis, RTS was found to be superior score than other clinical risk scores for predicting mortality. Keywords: Head trauma, in-hospital mortality, clinical risk scores