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A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T
Keywords: We investigated the associations between Glasgow Coma Scale scores and individuals’ characteristics in patients
Glasgow coma scale admitted to the Intensive Care Unit following an emergency surgery compared with other Intensive Care Unit
Prediction model patients. The study began in March 2020 and lasted for one year. It was conducted in the Department of Surgery
Intensive care unit
at a teaching hospital affiliated with a Medical University. We analyzed data from a dataset including 2055
Emergency
Surgery
included patients with a mean (SD) age of 55.0 (15.6) years. Overall, 983 (47.8%) patients were women, and 623
(30.3%) underwent emergency surgery. The outcome variable was the Glasgow Coma Scale score and the pre
dictors were a large number of patients’ demographic, comorbidity, clinical, and laboratory features. The
emergency surgery model showed a relatively accurate predictive ability [adjusted R2 = 75.1%, F (11, 486) =
136.0, p < 0.001] for estimating Glasgow Coma Scale scores. Respiratory rate, immunosuppressive state, having
a nosocomial infection, the fraction of inspired oxygen, sex, age, blood sugar, and bilirubin concentration were
statistically significant predictors of the Glasgow Coma Scale scores (all p < 0.05). The model for other patients
was less accurate [adjusted R2 = 65.0%, F (7, 1136) = 300.1, p < 0.001], but significant for respiratory rate,
fraction of inspired oxygen, sex, nosocomial infection, and serum creatinine (all p < 0.05). We concluded that
Glasgow Coma Scale scores can be predicted using patients’ characteristics in individuals admitted to the
Intensive Care Unit following emergency surgery. Multi-organ dysfunction in emergency situations leads to
neurological impairment beyond brain physical trauma.
1. Introduction condition in patients admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU), as well
[2,3,8]. A recent review study showed that in well-designed studies,
The Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) is often used to evaluate the level of kappa values were ≥0.6 in 85%, and all intra-class correlation co
consciousness in acute medical and trauma patients [1–3]. Due to the efficients were excellent for GCS. Though, poor-quality studies showed
widespread use of the scale, GCS remains the standard for communi lower reliability for GCS. However, another recent systematic review
cating among healthcare professionals in assessing impairment of con showed a greater discrimination for total GCS than the motor compo
sciousness, guiding management, predicting readmission, and nent of the GCS for in-hospital mortality, receipt of neurosurgical in
comparing different groups of patients at risk for mortality [2,4–7]. This terventions, severe brain injury, and emergency intubation [1,9].
made GCS score to serves as a marker for the severity of medical Training of caregivers and the quality of data affect the results of studies
Abbreviations: GCS, Glasgow Coma Scale; ICU, Intensive Care Unit; ES, Emergency Surgery; SD, Standard Deviation; CI, Confidence Interval; FiO2, Fraction of
Inspired Oxygen; ACTH, Adrenocorticotropic Hormone.
* Corresponding author. Department of Health Management and Economics, Faculty of Medicine, Aja University of Medical Sciences, Shahid Etemadzadeh St.,
Western Fatemi, Tehran, Postal code: 1411718541, Iran.
E-mail addresses: m.fathi@sbmu.ac.ir (M. Fathi), nmmoghaddam@sbmu.ac.ir (N.M. Moghaddam), sanazzargar@ajaums.ac.ir (S.Z. Balaye Jame), Darvishi1349@
gmail.com (M. Darvishi), mz.mortazavig@gmail.com (M. Mortazavi).
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.imu.2022.100904
Received 2 November 2021; Received in revised form 5 March 2022; Accepted 5 March 2022
Available online 8 March 2022
2352-9148/© 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-
nc-nd/4.0/).
M. Fathi et al. Informatics in Medicine Unlocked 29 (2022) 100904
on the reliability of GCS [1,10,11]. of modified GCS [23–25]. The predictors were primarily selected based
The GCS scale was transformed into score, and was proved as being on a consensus of the authors considering the limits of time, budget, and
useful in summarizing patients’ medical condition [2,11]. Research personnel [26,27]. We recorded patients’ sex and age, important
studies investigated the association of GCS scores with other clinical comorbidities, vital signs, information on nosocomial infections, arterial
outcomes as it can be influenced by many predictors. In these studies, blood gas, and a number of other laboratory test results, and mortality.
GCS is frequently considered as the surrogate for dysfunction of the Data were assessed for variables’ distribution, and severe class imbal
central nervous system in medical or traumatic patients, and the asso ance (less than 1% frequency for any level).
ciation of clinical predictors with GCS is believed to imply a prognostic
value for the GCS. Clinicians suggested that GCS is related to age [3,12,
2.4. Feature selection and modeling
13], traumatic axonal injury [14], or computed tomography-scan find
ings [15,16]. Also, research studies showed that plasma glucose [17,18],
Results are presented as mean (SD) for continuous variables, and as
serum trace elements [19], nitric oxide [20], chitinase-3-like protein 1,
absolute numbers (%) for categorical data. For point estimates, 95%
amyloid A1, C-reactive protein, and procalcitonin combined with
confidence intervals, and p-values were calculated. P-values less than
S100beta (a small calcium-binding protein) [21], and serum
0.05 were considered significant. The means of the continuous variables
neuron-specific enolase [22] are correlated with GCS score in different
were compared using independent sample t-tests and the proportions of
subgroups of patients. In the studies investigating the association of GCS
the categorical variables were compared with chi-squared test. We used
scores with other clinical outcomes, the target population were specif
the random forest to estimate the importance of variables in predicting
ically patients with traumatic brain injury. Meanwhile, our literature
GCS. The random forest was used for feature selection because of its
review suggested that there is a paucity of information on the associa
good performance, low overfitting, easy interpretability, and robustness
tion of GCS with routine clinical assessments in patients admitted to ICU
to the presence of correlated features [28]. For the random forest, we
following emergency surgery (ES).
used the Boruta algorithm with the maximum run of 100 to evaluate
We explored patients’ data at the time of admission to the ICU of a
output variable importance. The Boruta performs a top-down search for
tertiary hospital. The aim of conducting this study was to find if there are
relevant features by comparing original attributes’ importance with
associations between GCS scores and individuals’ characteristics in pa
importance achievable at random, estimated using their permuted
tients undergoing ES compared with other patients (Non-ES). A large
copies, and progressively eliminating irrelevant features. To calculate
number of demographic, clinical, and laboratory findings and several
errors, the data were then partitioned into development (training) and
comorbidities were incorporated into the predictive models. We hy
validation (test) datasets including 80% and 20% of the data, respec
pothesized that the GCS score would be significantly predicted by pa
tively. Next, we included the selected variables into two linear regres
tients’ attributes within 24 h of ICU admission.
sion models to predict GCS scores using the data of patients who
underwent ES and of patients with Non-ES reasons for admission. The
2. Material and methods
models were multivariable with GCS as the dependent and patients’
attributes as independent variables:
2.1. Design and setting
y = β 0 + β 1 X1 + β 2 X2 + … + β n Xn + ε
We carried out a cross-sectional study of ICU patients. The study
began in March 2020 and lasted for one year. It was conducted by the where y is the predicted value of GCS, β0 is the y-intercept, βiXi is the
Critical Care Quality Improvement Research Center, affiliated with regression coefficient βi of the ith attribute Xi, and ε is model error. All
Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences. The research was per non-elective surgeries that were performed when the patient’s life were
formed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. Ethics approval in danger was considered as ES. Using the Akaike information criterion,
was obtained from the Institutional Review Boards of Aja University of we carried out a stepwise forward modeling process to find the best set
Medical Sciences with the ethics code of IR.AJAUMS.REC.1397.697696. of predictors for developing the two models. The models’ assumptions,
All participants or their companions signed written consents for using fitness and generalizability were assessed with appropriate diagnostics.
patients’ data in the analyses. Patients were from two teaching hospitals Adjusted R2 was calculated for representing the proportion of the vari
affiliated with Aja or Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences. ance for GCS scores that is explained by predictors. The root mean
The hospitals are well-equipped settings with high patient turnovers, square error was computed for ES and Non-ES models. We also calcu
and are large referral and subspecialty centers. lated studentized and standardized residuals, Cook’s distance, the
variance inflation factor to assess outliers, influential points, and the
2.2. Data collection presence of multicollinearity for the two models. The Durbin-Watson
test was used to evaluate the independence of errors.
We included all adult patients who were admitted to the ICU. A
number of demographic, clinical, and laboratory features were recorded 2.4.1. Software
for each patient within the first 24 h of admission. Also, patients were We imported the data into R software version 4.0.2 (R Foundation for
monitored for undergoing any important procedure, and for mortality Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. https://www.R-project.org/).
during the ICU stay. In each work shift, a study nurse recorded the in We used a variety of R packages for the analyses. All the packages were
formation for each patient. Data were entered into a paper form, and downloaded from the Comprehensive R Archive Network (https://cran.
then, into the spreadsheet of Microsoft Office Excel software. The r-project.org/), the official R package repository, or the GitHub
presence of duplicated or missing data was investigated, and the cor (https://github.com/) website.
rectness of data was confirmed by examining 20% of the data.
3. Results
2.3. Outcome and predictors variables
3.1. Sample
The outcome variable of the study was the GCS score. The scores
were determined by four study anesthesiologists and intensivists who We had 2055 patients in our sample of ICU patients of which, 865
were experts in the assessment of patients. We considered the modified (42.1%) died. There were no missing data or duplicate cases in our
GCS classes for traumatic brain injuries in which the GCS scores of sample (Table 1). Mean (SD) for GCS scores was 10.7 (2.4) with the 95%
13–15, 9–12, and 3–8 correspond to mild, moderate, and severe classes CI of (10.61, 10.82) and the median (interquartile range) was 11.0 (9.0,
2
M. Fathi et al. Informatics in Medicine Unlocked 29 (2022) 100904
Table 1 13.0). Fig. 1 shows the distribution of GCS scores in the sample. Fig. 2
Characteristics of the study sample. illustrates the results of the feature selection result and Fig. 3 illustrates
Feature All (N = GCS Classes p the heatmap of the features. The features were sorted according to their
2055) importance to the prediction. We included the selected predictors in the
[13–15] [9–12] [3–8] (N
(N = 584) (N = = 356) modeling process.
1115)
3
M. Fathi et al. Informatics in Medicine Unlocked 29 (2022) 100904
Fig. 2. Variable importance for predicting the GCS scores. The white boxplots illustrate the selected features. PaO2: Partial Pressure of Oxygen; PaCO2: Partial
pressure of carbon dioxide; SBP: Systolic Blood Pressure; COPD: Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease; MI: Myocardial Infarction; Hct: Hematocrit; CKD: Chronic
Kidney Disease; BUN: Blood Urea Nitrogen; FiO2: Fraction of Inspired Oxygen.
rate, FiO2, the male sex, nosocomial infection, and serum creatinine
concentration were statistically significant.
Research studies controversially suggested that GCS could be used as
a guide to decision-making for the treatment of patients with critical
conditions [29,30]. Also, GCS is thought to convey prognostic infor
mation for the outcome of treatment in ICU patients [6,13,31,32]. In
addition to defining a combination of GCS with other indices of criti
cality, researchers tried to increase the accuracy of GCS prognostic
ability by subgrouping patients into clinically meaningful classes [33].
We had categorized our patients to ES versus Non-ES rather than using
traditional classes of brain trauma versus non-brain trauma. The results
should have been reasonably affected by the way we categorized our
patients. However, this grouping of patients allowed us to cover a larger
spectrum of patients.
Our results comply with some data scattered in the literature con
cerning brain trauma patients [34–38]. Respiratory rate on arrival at the
emergency department has been shown to be an explanatory variable for
in-hospital mortality of trauma patients [39]. A previous study on
trauma patients had shown that on arrival, patients experience an
elevated ACTH and cortisol concentration which declines to normal
value over five days [34]. An immunosuppressive state alters the normal
pattern of healing and increases the risk for poor outcomes. Similar to
our results, nosocomial infections have been reported to be associated
with low GCS in traumatic brain injury [35]. A study suggested that
Fig. 3. Feature heatmap showing correlations between the features. FiO2 was inversely correlated with cerebral blood flow after severe head
injury leading to poor brain tissue oxygen delivery and lactate accu
immunosuppressive state, nosocomial infection, FiO2, the male sex, age, mulation [36]. Our study replicated the findings regarding the inverse
blood sugar, and bilirubin concentration were statistically significant relation between GCS and bilirubin [37], and the results concerning age,
predictors of GCS. It is believed that traumatic damages to subcortical and sex [38].
white matter dissociate metabolism between the cerebral cortex and In a correlational study, Bae et al. investigated the relation between
deeper brain regions [18]. Meanwhile, our results might be an impli serum factors at admission and the outcome of traumatic brain injury. A
cation for the presence of multi-organ dysfunction in emergency situa combination of serum factors and the GCS was proposed as a prognostic
tions and for the role of internal environment instability in neurological model for the patient undergoing decompressive craniectomy. They
impairment beyond physical trauma. In the Non-ES patients, respiratory included 219 patients (44 women) with a mean (SD) age of 49 (11.5)
4
M. Fathi et al. Informatics in Medicine Unlocked 29 (2022) 100904
Table 2
Characteristics of the two linear models.
ES Non-ES
Feature B SE p Feature B SE p
(Intercept) 19.602 0.572 <0.001* (Intercept) 16.982 0.352 <0.001*
Respiratory Rate (n/min) − 0.259 0.017 <0.001* Respiratory Rate (n/min) − 0.262 0.013 <0.001*
Immune Suppression − 3.197 0.322 <0.001* FiO2 (%) − 0.020 0.004 <0.001*
Nosocomial Infection − 1.557 0.364 <0.001* Sex (male) 0.373 0.083 <0.001*
FiO2 (%) − 0.022 0.004 <0.001* Nosocomial Infection − 0.505 0.104 <0.001*
Sex (male) − 0.354 0.128 0.006* Creatinine (mg/dL) 0.577 0.126 <0.001*
WBC (n/μL) 0.000 0.000 0.002* Urine Volume (mL) 0.000 0.000 0.042*
Hct (%) − 0.031 0.013 0.022* Immune Suppression − 0.163 0.107 0.127
Age (year) 0.016 0.005 0.001*
Blood Sugar (mmol/L) − 0.003 0.002 0.030*
Bilirubin (μmol/L) − 0.132 0.068 0.045*
CKD 1.144 0.715 0.110
ES: patients who underwent emergency surgery; SE: Standard Error; FiO2: Fraction of Inspired Oxygen; MI: Myocardial Infarction; Hct: Hematocrit; CKD: Chronic
Kidney Disease.
*Significant at p < 0.05.
Fig. 4. Residuals of the ES (left column) and Non-ES (right column) models. The dashed lines represent reference values. ES: patients who underwent emer
gency surgery.
years. Hemoglobin, platelets, prothrombin time, and lactate dehydro higher than the other group (p = 0.0367). They concluded that the
genase were dichotomized and incorporated into a logistic model. They correlation of the GCS score and plasma glucose differed according to
suggested that the combination is of prognostic value [24]. Overall, GCS the severity of hypoglycemia. They recommended the assessment of
is a well-established means of neurological assessment in critically ill blood glucose even in patients with high GCS scores [17]. Hattori et al.
patients. We included a larger sample; assessed a larger number of included 11 healthy people and 23 patients with traumatic brain injury
features; and found the relations between GCS scores and patients’ who underwent positron emission tomography with fluorodeoxyglucose
characteristics. Indeed, our study implied that the construct of GCS re integrated with computed tomography within 5 days after injury. They
lies upon some pathophysiological processes. From the statistical point suggested that there is a significant difference in glucose metabolism in
of view and owing to the collinearities, those predictors are not rec the thalamus, brain stem, and cerebellum between comatose and
ommended to be combined with GCS in predicting an outcome. non-comatose patients shortly after the injury. The metabolic rate of
Kotera et al. investigated the association between the GCS score and glucose correlated with the level of consciousness [18]. Also, the
plasma glucose concentration. In a retrospective cohort study, they changes of serum trace elements following trauma have been suggested
included 41 hypoglycemic patients into mild (n = 14) and moderate/ to be associated with multiple organ failure and their monitoring has
severe (n = 27) hypoglycemia groups. The relation between the GCS been recommended in severe traumatic patients [19]. Our study showed
score and plasma glucose was evaluated with Spearman rank correla the possibility of metabolic changes and multiple organ dysfunction
tion. The GCS scores of the mild hypoglycemia group were significantly among patients undergoing ES, as well.
5
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M. Fathi et al. Informatics in Medicine Unlocked 29 (2022) 100904
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