The effect of pre-hospital intubation on prognosis in infants, children and adolescents with severe traumatic brain injury

Traumatic brain injury is one of the leading causes of death and sources of heavy societal burden. Hypoxemia and hypercapnia are the 2 common complications of brain injury. Intubation seems to be an effective intervention for preventing the 2 complications in pre-hospital setting. But the results of the existing studies on the effect of pre-hospital intubation on prognosis of patients (aged less than 18) with severe traumatic brain injury are conflict. Thus, in this study, we aim to conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis to evaluate whether pre-hospital intubation is benefit for the prognosis in infants, children and adolescents with severe traumatic brain injury. Methods: We will develop a systematic search strategy which includes MEDLINE, EMBASE, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Chinese Biomedical Literature Database, WanFang Data and China National Knowledge Infrastructure. The WHO International Clinical Trials Registry Platform will be searched for the ongoing studies as well. The cohort studies which aim to evaluate the effect of pre-hospital intubation for infants, children and adolescents with severe traumatic brain injury will be selected. The Newcastle-Ottawa Scale will be used for assessing the risk of bias of the included studies. Results: The results of this study will be presented in the full-text of the systematic review. Conclusion: This is the first systematic review and meta-analysis about evaluation of the effect of pre-hospital intubation on prognosis in infants, children and adolescents with traumatic brain injury. PRESPERO registration number: CRD42019121214