Development and Verification of Prognostic Prediction Models for Patients with Brain Trauma Based on Coagulation Function Indexes

Objective: To assess the effect of adding coagulation indices to the currently existing prognostic prediction models of traumatic brain injury (TBI) in the prediction of outcome.

Methods: A total of 210 TBI patients from 2017 to 2019 and 131 TBI patients in 2020 were selected for development and internal verification of the new model. The primary outcomes include death at 14 days and Glasgow Outcome Score (GOS) at 6 months. The performance of each model is evaluated by means of discrimination (area under the curve (AUC)), calibration (Hosmer-Lemeshow (H-L) goodness-of-fit test), and precision (Brier score).

Results: The IMPACT Core model showed better prediction ability than the CRASH Basic model. Adding one coagulation index at a time to the IMPACT Core model, the new combined models IMPACT Core+FIB and IMPACT Core+APTT are optimal for the 6-month unfavorable outcome and 6-month mortality, respectively (AUC, 0.830 and 0.878). The new models were built based on the regression coefficients of the models. Internal verification indicated that for the prediction of 6-month unfavorable outcome and 6-month mortality, both the IMPACT Core+FIB model and the IMPACT Core+APTT model show better discrimination (AUC, 0.823 vs. 0.818 and 0.853 vs. 0.837), better calibration (HL, = 0.114 and = 0.317) and higher precision (Brier score, 0.148 vs. 0.141 and 0.147 vs. 0.164), respectively, than the original models.

Conclusion: Our research shows that the combination of the traumatic brain injury prognostic models and coagulation indices can improve the 6-month outcome prediction of patients with TBI.