Objective: Traumatic brain injury (TBI) often cause morbidity and mortality, but it is hard to obtained predictive biomarkers. Red blood cell distribution width (RDW) has been reported as a mortalmarker in cardiovascular disease. But it is unknown whethr RDW is associated with the mortality of TBI patients. The aim of this study is to identify whether RDW is a prognostic biomarker for TBI mortality.
Methods: A total of 122 patients with TBI were included retrospectively. Patients were divided into Survival Group and Non-survival Group, RDW was compared between 2 groups. Receiver Operating Curve (ROC) was used to evaluate the mortality predictive performances.
Results: 122 patients were included, the male-female ratio was 2.59 (88/34) with their median age of 49.5 (17-89) years. 13 (11.93%) of them were divided into Non-survival Group. We observed significant difference in RDW between two groups (P < 0.05). The cut-off level for RDW in TBI was ≥ 12.85, with the sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value (PPV), negative predictive value (NPV) were 65.4%, 95.7%, 69.7%, 82.6%, respectively; and area under the curve was 0.805 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.703-0.906).
Conclusions: Red cell distribution width is a predictor of mortality in patients with TBI.
Keywords: Traumatic brain injury; glasgow coma scale scores; mortality; prognostic biomarker; red blood cell distribution width.