The purpose of this study was to identify the clinical variables that predict functional and cognitive recovery at 1- and 6-month in both severe and moderate/mild traumatic brain injury patients.

The subjects of this study were 82 traumatically brain-injured patients who were admitted to a Neurological Intensive Care Unit at a university hospital. Potential prognostic factors included were age, motor and pupillary response, systolic blood pressure, heart rate, and the presence of intracranial hematoma at admission.

The significant predictors of functional disability in severe traumatic brain injury subjects were, age, systolic blood pressure, the presence of intracranial hematoma, motor response, and heart rate at admission. In moderate/mild traumatic brain injury patients, motor response, abnormal pupil reflex, and heart rate at admission were identified as significant predictors of functional disability. On the other hand, the significant predictors of cognitive ability for severe traumatic brain injury patients were motor response and the presence of intracranial hematoma at admission, whereas those for moderate/mild patients were motor response, pupil reflex, systolic blood pressure at admission, and age.

The results of the present study indicate that the significant predictors of TBI differ according to TBI severity on admission, outcome type, and outcome measurement time. This can be meaningful to critical care nurses for a better understanding on the prediction of brain injury patients. On the other hand, the model used in the present study appeared to produce relatively low explicabilities for functional and cognitive recovery although a direct comparison of our results with those of others is difficult due to differences in outcome definition and validation METHODS: This implies that other clinical variables should be added to the model used in the present study to increase its predicting power for determining functional and cognitive outcomes.

This was a cross sectional descriptive study to introduce the Infants Coma Scale (ICS), describe mental status of high risk infants using ICS and explore the relationships between ICS and clinical variables in infants hospitalized in a neonatal intensive care unit of a university hospital in Korea.

After ICS was developed and tested by the authors, a research nurse evaluated the mental status of the infants using the English version of ICS and obtained clinical information on the infants from their medical records.

Data from 88 infants were analyzed. About 60% were male, 90% were preterm births, and 40% had pathologic abnormalities. Their mean gestational age was 32.4 (±3.50) weeks and the mean birth weight was 1,842 (±728.6) grams. The Cronbach's alpha for the ICS was .78. There was a statistically significant positive correlation between ICS total score and five clinical variables including gestational age, birth weight, 1 and 5 min Apgar scores and respiration status.

Mental status is an important parameter in nursing assessment. ICS is a valid and reliable instrument, which clinicians can easily use to evaluate the mental status of high risk infants.