In November 2017, the Lancet Neurology Commission on Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) highlighted existing deficiencies in epidemiology, patient characterization, identifying best practice, outcome assessment, and evidence generation. The Commission concluded that C needed to address deficiencies in prevention , and made a recommendation for large collaborative studies which could provide the framework for precision medicine and comparative effectiveness research (CER).

IMPORTANCE A head computed tomography (CT) with positive results for acute intracranial hemorrhage is the gold-standard diagnostic biomarker for acute traumatic brain injury (TBI). In moderate to severe TBI (Glasgow Coma Scale [GCS] scores 3-12), some CT features have been shown to be associated with outcomes. In mild TBI (mTBI; GCS scores 13-15), distribution and co-occurrence of pathological CT features and their prognostic importance are not well understood. OBJECTIVE To identify pathological CT features associated with adverse outcomes after mTBI. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS The longitudinal, observational Transforming Research and Clinical Knowledge in Traumatic Brain Injury (TRACK-TBI) study enrolled patients with TBI, including those 17 years and older with GCS scores of 13 to 15 who presented to emergency departments at 18 US level 1 trauma centers between February 26, 2014, and August 8, 2018, and underwent head CT imaging within 24 hours of TBI. Evaluations of CT imaging used TBI Common Data Elements. Glasgow Outcome Scale-Extended (GOSE) scores were assessed at 2 weeks and 3, 6, and 12 months postinjury. External validation of results was performed via the Collaborative European NeuroTrauma Effectiveness Research in Traumatic Brain Injury (CENTER-TBI) study. Data analyses were completed from February 2020 to February 2021. EXPOSURES Acute nonpenetrating head trauma. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES Frequency, co-occurrence, and clustering of CT features; incomplete recovery (GOSE scores <8 vs 8); and an unfavorable outcome (GOSE scores <5 vs Ն5) at 2 weeks and 3, 6, and 12 months. RESULTS In 1935 patients with mTBI (mean [SD] age, 41.5 [17.6] years; 1286 men [66.5%]) in the TRACK-TBI cohort and 2594 patients with mTBI (mean [SD] age, 51.8 [20.3] years; 1658 men [63.9%]) in an external validation cohort, hierarchical cluster analysis identified 3 major clusters of CT features: contusion, subarachnoid hemorrhage, and/or subdural hematoma; intraventricular and/or petechial hemorrhage; and epidural hematoma. Contusion, subarachnoid hemorrhage, and/or subdural hematoma features were associated with incomplete recovery (odds ratios [ORs] for GOSE scores <8 at 1 year: TRACK-TBI, 1.80 [95% CI, 1.39-2.33]; CENTER-TBI, 2.73 [95% CI, 2.18-3.41]) and greater degrees of unfavorable outcomes (ORs for GOSE scores <5 at 1 year: TRACK-TBI, 3.23 [95% CI, 1.59-6.58]; CENTER-TBI, 1.68 [95% CI, 1.13-2.49]) out to 12 months after injury, but epidural hematoma was not. Intraventricular and/or petechial hemorrhage was associated with greater degrees of unfavorable outcomes up to 12 months after injury (eg, OR for GOSE scores <5 at 1 year in ). Some CT features were more strongly associated with outcomes than previously validated variables (eg, ORs for GOSE scores <5 at 1 year in TRACK-TBI: neuropsychiatric history, 1.43 [95% CI .98-2.10] vs contusion, subarachnoid hemorrhage, and/or subdural hematoma, 3.23 [95% CI 1.59-6.58]). Findings were externally validated in 2594 patients with mTBI enrolled in the CENTER-TBI study. C...

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Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is currently classified as mild, moderate or severe TBI by trichotomizing the Glasgow coma scale (GCS). We aimed to explore directions for a more refined multidimensional classification system. For that purpose, we performed a hypothesis-free cluster analysis in the CENTER-TBI database: a European all-severity TBI cohort (n=4509). The first building block consisted of key imaging characteristics, summarized using principal component analysis from 12 imaging characteristics. The other building blocks were demographics, clinical severity, secondary insults, and cause of injury. With these building blocks, the patients were clustered into four groups. We applied bootstrap resampling with replacement to study the stability of cluster allocation. The characteristics which predominantly defined the clusters were injury cause, major extracranial injury, and GCS. The clusters consisted of 1451, 1534, 1006, and 518 patients, respectively. The clustering method was quite stable: the proportion of patients staying in one cluster after resampling and reclustering was 97.4% (95% CI:85.6%-99.9%). These clusters characterised groups of patients with different functional outcomes: from mild to severe, 12%, 19%, 36%, and 58% of patients had unfavourable sixmonth outcome. Compared to the mild and the upper intermediate cluster, the lower intermediate and the severe cluster received more key interventions. To conclude, four types of TBI patients may be defined by injury mechanism, presence of major extracranial injury and GCS. Describing patients according to these three characteristics could potentially capture differences in etiology and care pathways better than with GCS only.