Head injured patients provide very rich but diverse data from physiological monitoring, patient demographic, treatment and imaging sources. Advances in the technology used in the intensive care environment permits thee measurement and recording of high time resolution data. The BrainIT project was conceived in 1997 and has grown into an international collaboration with the purpose of gathering high time resolution data from head injured patients.
Methods: Over the period between 1998 and 2006 data capture systems were deployed in high dependency and intensive care units in 21 participating neuroscience centres. Three main types of information was recorded: demographic information included age, cause, GCS, CT scan, pupil reaction and times of transfer, physiological data including minute by minute recording including ICP, CPP, MAP and other commonly measured variables and clinical treatment information.
Results: Data from a total of 349 patients (277 male and 72 female) has recorded and transmitted to the co-ordinating centre in Glasgow. The age of these patients ranged from 1 to 87 years (median 31). 145 had been involved in a traffic accident and 32 were pedestrians; 78 had suffered a fall and 24 were assaulted. A large amount of physiological data was collected (eg BP 2531 days, ICP 2212 days in total). This dataset has provided the opportunity to perform unique analysis. The statistical features of blood pressure, diurnal variations in ICP, optimal sampling rate determination and a comparison of summary measures of secondary insults will all be discussed.
Conclusions: This challenging collaboration has successfully developed a clinical research network focussed on improving the treatment of head injured patients. It has brought together a large number of centres capable and willing to undertake clinical research across the network. It has also successfully collected a vast quantity of high quality data that provides a rich source for analysis and hypothesis testing.
Acknowledgements: We wish to acknowledge the contribution of all data contributing members of the BrainIT group (www.brainit.org) who supported the EEC project: QLRI-2003-01160.
Chambers IR, Sahuquillo J, Ragauskas A, Mattern J, Nilsson P, Kiening K, Howells T, Enblad P, Citerio G, Gregson B. BrainIT Collaborative Network: Analyses from a High Time-resolution Dataset of Head Injured Patients. International Symposium on Intracranial Pressure and Brain Monitoring, Mechanisms and Treatment. 23rd July 2007, San Francisco.
Dr. Iain R. Chambers, Cleveland Unit, Middlesbrough. Tel: +44 (0)1642-854-778.
Regional Medical Physics Department, Newcastle General Hospital, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE4 6BE, UK.
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