The use of anti-inflammatory drugs to treat patients with severe head injuries—common practice worldwide for the past 30 years—is actually dangerous and associated with around a 20% increase in death within two weeks of hospital admission, conclude authors of an international study in this week’s issue of THE LANCET.
Around 3 million people worldwide die of trauma every year, many after arrival at hospital. Findings of a 1997 systematic review suggested that these drugs might reduce the risk of death by a few percent; previous individual trials had been too small to provide a clear-cut answer. The CRASH trial (corticosteroid randomisation after significant head injury)—a multicentre international collaboration—aimed to confirm or refute such an effect by recruiting 20,000 patients. In May, 2004, the data monitoring committee disclosed the unmasked results to the steering committee, which stopped recruitment to the trial.
10,008 adults (from 239 hospitals in 49 countries) with head injury were randomly allocated corticosteroids (methylprednisolone) or placebo for 48 hours after admission to a hospital emergency department. Those patients given corticosteroids had a higher death rate within 2 weeks (21% of patients) than those given placebo (18%). The 6-month follow-up data will be presented in a subsequent paper.