Novel approaches to prediction in severe brain injury

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: Recovery after severe brain injury is variable and challenging to accurately predict at the individual patient level. This review highlights new developments in clinical prognostication with a special focus on the prediction of consciousness and increasing reliance on methods from data science. RECENT FINDINGS: Recent research has leveraged serum biomarkers, quantitative electroencephalography, MRI, and physiological time-series to build models for recovery prediction. The analysis of high-resolution data and the integration of features from different modalities can be approached with efficient computational techniques. SUMMARY: Advances in neurophysiology and neuroimaging, in combination with computational methods, represent a novel paradigm for prediction of consciousness and functional recovery after severe brain injury. Research is needed to produce reliable, patient-level predictions that could meaningfully impact clinical decision making.