Evoked potentials in severe head injury--analysis and relation to outcome

Somatosensory, visual and auditory cortical and brainstem evoked responses were obtained from 32 patients with severe head injury. A simple count of the number of waves present in the various responses provided the optimum method of analysing the data. The results of each cortical response, but not of the brainstem response, correlated with outcome, and a combined assessment gave the highest correlation. The data provided only slight improvement on predictions based upon clinical features.