Objective
To identify the clinical characteristics of the patients with hypoxic-hypotensive brain injury (HBI) and to compare the prognosis of HBI with patients with traumatic brain injury (TBI).

Method
Six patients with HBI and sixteen patients with TBI, who had been comatose for more than 8 hours, were enrolled. The functional status was evaluated by the Functional Independence Measure (FIM) score.

Results
The causes of HBI were: two respiratory arrest, three cardiac arrest, and one hypotensive shock. Most patients had memory disturbance, confusion, spasticity, contracture of joints, and weakness after the HBI. Other problems included dysphagia, ataxia or tremor, dementia, and concomitant medical problems. Among these clinical features, confusion and spasticity were serious obstacles in rehabilitation. The HBI patients had lower initial and discharge total FIM score, total FIM gain, total FIM efficacy, cognitive FIM efficacy, and motor FIM efficacy than the TBI patients. The HBI patients had a poor outcome due to more widespread brain damage, medical complications, and delayed rehabilitation treatments as compared with TBI patients.

Conclusion
We concluded that HBI patients had more diffuse and severe deficit than TBI patients.