Abstract
An increase in the number of a person of advanced age in Japan, corresponding to the super-aging society world-wide, has become an urgent medical issue in Japan. According to the Japan Neurotrauma Data Bank (JNTDB) project 2015, the percentage of patients older than 65 years with severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) is 51.7%. Just more than half of the severe TBI patients in Japan are geriatric. While geriatric patients with acute subdural hematoma or delayed exacerbation are often seen, a high proportion of these geriatric TBI patients taking anti-thrombotic drugs are receiving attension in recent years. The data from the JNTDB project 2015 (n=1,345, April 2015-March 2017) were evaluated in this study. The geriatric TBI patients taking anti-platelet drugs had a significantly higher prevalence of fall as a mechanism of injury, intracranial bleeding and “talk & deteriorate” when compared with that of the patients not taking anti-platelet drugs. Similarly, the geriatric patients taking anti-coagulants had a significantly higher prevalence of fall as a mechanism of injury, intracranial bleeding and “talk & deteriorate”. It is important to appropriately respond to those patients before deterioration, specifically diagnosis with head CT scan, and to neutralize the anti-thrombotic drugs.
