ABSTRACT
Introduction: In patients presenting to Emergency Department(ED) with traumatic brain injury, it is important to evaluate the neurological status to determine the present clinical status and to predict outcome of the patient. GCS is the most widely used score,but it has some drawbacks which led to the development of other scores such as the Full Outline of Unresponsiveness (FOUR) score. In our study, we compared the GCS and the FOUR scores in patients presenting with traumatic brain injury. Aims: 1) To compare the FOUR score with the GCS score in traumatic brain injury (TBI) patients. 2) To understand the effectiveness of FOUR score as an assessment tool. 3) To assess whether FOUR score is an alternative tool in TBI patients or could be complimentary. Methods: We conducted a prospective observational study at a trauma centre of a tertiary care hospital during January 2019 to March 2019 after taking institutional ethical committee approval. All patients presenting with clinical diagnosis of TBI were evaluated and given a GCS and FOUR score by the emergency physician. Relevant investigations were done and findings were noted. We tabulated all information in Microsoft Excel 2019 and statistical analysis was done with SPSS software. Results: The mean age of study population was 38.295+/- 15.33 years. Male patients were 79% and 21% were female patients. Road traffic accidents contributed highest percentages of causes of TBI (60%). By comparing the median value of FOUR score with mortality and the median value of GCS score with the mortality by using the Mann-Whitney test showed a p-value of ?1, which is statistically non-significant. Conclusions: FOUR score is equally reliable with GCS score. Both have their own significance