People suffering from traumatic brain injuries shouldn’t receive steroids to reduce inflammation, say researchers after comparing death rates among patients who received the drugs to those who received a placebo.
Researchers involved about 10,000 patients for the study, results showed 21 percent of those treated with the drugs died compared to 18 percent of those who were not treated. According to Dr.Phil Alderson who conducted the study, steroids should no longer be routinely used in people with traumatic head injury because it is associated with significant mortality.According to a survey conducted in 2000, about one-third of all trauma centers in the United States routinely use steroids to treat traumatic brain injury cases. Traumatic brain injury affects about 1.4 million Americans every year and causes 50,000 deaths.
