Intracranial complications of preinjury anticoagulation in trauma patients with head injury.

Background: We have evaluated our recent experience as a Level I trauma center to test the hypothesis that preinjury anticoagulation adversely affects the morbidity and mortality of trauma patients with an intracranial injury.

Methods: Records of 380 patients admitted to the trauma service from January 1997 to December 1998 who at the time of admission were taking warfarin, low-molecular-weight heparin, aspirin, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, clopidogrel, dipyridamole, pentoxifylline, or naproxen were reviewed. Thirty-seven patients with intracranial injuries were identified and compared with a matched (age, gender, mechanism, and severity of injury) control group of 37 patients with similar head injury but not taking any anticoagulant randomly selected from the trauma registry for that same time period.