The study, published Monday in Journal of Neurotrauma, used a national database that included 1,392 traumatic brain injury patients.
Sifting through the data, they ended up comparing 80 patients with severe injuries who died after life support was withdrawn, with 80 similar patients whose life support was not withdrawn.
In their analysis, the researchers found that most patients whose life support was continued died anyway in the hospital, within about six days. But 42 percent who continued life support recovered enough in the next year to have some degree of independence. A few even returned to their former lives.
Despite the study’s limitations, “this data is really helpful,” said Dr. Walter Koroshetz, director of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, who was not involved with the study. (The institute, part of the federal National Institutes of Health, originally funded the database used by the researchers, but it is now funded with grants from multiple sources.) The longer the family waits to decide, the better the doctors’ prognostication will be, he noted.
Uncertainty, though, is ever-present.
Doctors know, Dr. Koroshetz noted, that recovery is slow and usually goes on for months or even years. But, he said, some patients who needed ventilators and were expected to lead a life of extreme disability walk into the hospital a year later “chatting it up with the nurses.”
Kaynak: briturkish.com
