Assessment of outcome prediction in severe brain damage patients with brainstem auditory evoked response.

Patients with various neurological disease resulting in severe brain damage and having Glasgow Coma Scale (G.C.S.) score of less than ten (mean 5.6) were studied with brainstem auditory evoked response (BAER) during the first few days of onset. Among them were subarachnoid hemorrhage, head injury, intracerebral hemorrhage, pontine hemorrhage, intraventricular hemorrhage and bleeding tumor. BAERs were graded into four levels from one (normal) to four (most abnormal). Outcomes were categorized through the Glasgow Outcome Scale. Comparison of the results between BAER and G.C.S. as predictors of outcome was quite similar. Both were reliable in terms of predicting a correctly pessimistic outcome (90% or more), but not a correctly optimistic outcome (40% or less).