Dissertations & Theses (Open Access)

UTILITY OF PLASMA BIOMARKERS IN THE VALIDATION OF REPORTED LOC & PTA FOR GCS 13-15 PATIENTS: A TRACK-TBI PILOT STUDY

JEFFREY BRENNAN, UTHealth School of Public Health

Abstract

Depending on a brain injury patient to accurately report their duration of unconsciousness and amnesia is clearly flawed. We constructed biomarker-based models to validate these self-reported measurements using a GCS 13-15 subset of participants from TRACK-TBI, a multi-institutional study on traumatic brain injury. Potential covariates were assessed for significant interactions with biomarker level. We report that the predictions of LOC and PTA failed. GFAP exhibited the most consistent serum level increase between categories of both LOC and PTA. Given a number of issues with the study sample, we recommend continued investigation on the prediction of LOC and PTA using a larger database.