Background The definition of traumatic brain injury is a change in brain function or indication of brain pathology brought on by an outside force. Aim The work aimed to assess the correlation among optic nerve sheath diameter (ONSD) measurements and computed tomography brain as a monitoring tool in the evaluation of brain edema after dehydrating measures in studied cases with traumatic brain injury. Patients and methods This study included 50 patients suffering from brain edema after traumatic brain injury who were admitted to Critical Care Units according to the sample size calculation. Results In this research, we found that receiver operating characteristic curve analysis showed the ability of ONSD in the prediction and discrimination of brain edema cases. (0.971) confidence intervals (CI 0.93–1.011) with a cut of point 5.8 mm with sensitivity 92% and specificity 84%, positive predictive value 85.19 and negative predictive value 91.3. It means that 92% of patients with ONSD more than 5.8 mm will have an elevated intracranial pressure (ICP); meanwhile 84% of patients who have ONSD less than 5.8 mm would not have an elevated ICP. Conclusion When invasive ICP evaluation has been contraindicated, unavailable, or unstable in patients with traumatic head injuries, ultrasonography could serve as a screening method for early ICP detection and a viable alternative to computed tomography scanning. It can also be used to assess the effectiveness of treatment by dehydrating measures. The morbidity and mortality of the studied cases upon admission may be predicted by the ONSD values.
Mahrous et al. (Tue,) studied this question.