• Markus Lenski, Volker Huge, Michael Schmutzer, Moritz Ueberschaer, Josef Briegel, Jörg-Christian Tonn, Christian Schichor, and Niklas Thon.
• Departments of Neurosurgery.
• J Neurosurg Anesthesiol. 2019 Apr 1; 31 (2): 227-233.

BackgroundExternal ventricular drain (EVD)-associated ventriculitis is a serious complication. Early diagnosis can be difficult particularly in critically ill patients with aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage (aSAH). We examined the diagnostic potential of standard serum and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarkers to differentiate between EVD-associated infections and aseptic courses in patients with aSAH.Materials And MethodsWe retrospectively evaluated the levels of inflammatory markers in serum (white blood cell count, percentage of neutrophils [sN%], and procalcitonin) and CSF (total leukocyte count [CSFTLC], CSFglucose, CSF/serumglucose ratio, CSF total protein [CSFTP]) of 63 consecutive patients with aSAH. Receiver operating characteristic curves and the area-under-the-curve (AUC) were calculated to detect the diagnostic potential, optimized threshold, sensitivity (SE), specificity (SP), + likelihood ratio (LR), and -LR of each biomarker.ResultsOf all patients, 17 (27%) developed an EVD-associated ventriculitis within a mean of 7.8±2.3 days after implantation. sN% had a very good diagnostic potential (AUC=0.900, SE=70.0%, SP=100%), followed by the CSFTLC with good diagnostic potential (AUC=0.841, SE=75.0%, SP=88.5%), and the CSFTP with moderate diagnostic potential (AUC=0.772, SE=73.3%, SP=76.0%). sN% higher than 70% and a CSFTLC higher than 635/µL were highly associated with the diagnosis of ventriculitis (+LR=∞ and 6.5), sN%<70% or a CSFTLC<635 made a diagnosis of ventriculitis unlikely (-LR=0.3 and 0.28).ConclusionsRoutine determination of N% and CSFTLC are useful to distinguish ventriculitis from aseptic courses in the acute phase after aSAH and regardless of the bacteriological test result.

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