Traumatic brain injury laboratory findings

Editor-In-Chief: C. Michael Gibson, M.S., M.D. [1] Joanna Ekabua, M.D. [2] Deekshitha Manney, M.D.[[3]]

Laboratory findings have little to no utility of diagnostic importance to the TBI. They may however, be useful, in case patient needs emergent surgery.

One of the rare but very interesting finding that one can see in laboratory evaluation would be hyponatremia. An elevated intracranial pressure can induce natriuresis and lead to hyponatremia in very rare cases. But otherwise, the important laboratory investigations to get complete blood count, comprehensive metabolic panel, PT/INR and PTT in case patient needs emergent surgery. CSF analysis is not done in clinical practice, as a lumbar puncture carries higher risk of herniation and the analysis itself is not particularly useful. But you can see the following abnormal findings in the CSF^[1]

• Spectrin breakdown product (SBDP)120 and SBDP145
• Ubiquitin C-terminal hydrolase-L1 (UCH-L1)
• Glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP)

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