The Morbidity and Mortality of Surgery for Traumatic Brain Injury in Geriatric Patients: A Study of Over 100 000 Patient Cases

BACKGROUND Geriatric patients have the highest rates of Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)-related hospitalization and death. This contributes to an assumption of futility in aggressive management in this population. OBJECTIVE To evaluate the effect of surgical intervention on the morbidity and mortality of geriatric patients with TBI. METHODS A retrospective analysis of patients ≥80 yr old with TBI from 2003 to 2016 was performed using the National Trauma Data Bank. Univariate and multivariate analyses were performed to compare outcomes between surgery and nonsurgery groups. RESULTS A total of 127 129 patient incidents were included: 121 185 (95.3%) without surgery and 5944 (4.7%) with surgery. The surgical group was slightly younger (84.0 vs 84.3, P