Neurocritical care
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A variety of technologies have been developed to assist decision-making during the management of patients with acute brain injury who require intensive care. A large body of research has been generated describing these various technologies. ⋯ This supplement contains a Consensus Summary Statement with recommendations and individual topic reviews on physiologic processes important in the care of acute brain injury. In this article we provide the evidentiary tables for select topics including systemic hemodynamics, intracranial pressure, brain and systemic oxygenation, EEG, brain metabolism, biomarkers, processes of care and monitoring in emerging economies to provide the clinician ready access to evidence that supports recommendations about neuromonitoring.
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Careful patient monitoring using a variety of techniques including clinical and laboratory evaluation, bedside physiological monitoring with continuous or non-continuous techniques and imaging is fundamental to the care of patients who require neurocritical care. How best to perform and use bedside monitoring is still being elucidated. ⋯ This supplement contains a Consensus Summary Statement with recommendations and individual topic reviews as a background to the recommendations. In this article, we highlight the recommendations and provide additional conclusions as an aid to the reader and to facilitate bedside care.
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The goal of multimodality neuromonitoring is to provide continuous, real-time assessment of brain physiology to prevent, detect, and attenuate secondary brain injury. Clinical informatics deals with biomedical data, information, and knowledge including their acquisition, storage, retrieval, and optimal use for clinical decision-making. An electronic literature search was conducted for English language articles describing the use of informatics in the intensive care unit setting from January 1990 to August 2013. ⋯ Ergonomic data display that present results from analyses with clinical information in a sensible uncomplicated manner improve clinical decision-making. Collecting and archiving the highest resolution physiologic and phenotypic data in a comprehensive open format data warehouse is a crucial first step toward information management and two-way translational research for multimodality monitoring. The infrastructure required is largely the same as that needed for telemedicine intensive care applications, which under the right circumstances improves care quality while reducing cost.
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Neuromonitoring has evolved rapidly in recent years and there now are many new monitors that have revealed a great deal about the ongoing pathophysiology of brain injury and coma. Further evolution will include the consolidation of multi-modality monitoring (MMM), the development of next-generation informatics tools to identify complex physiologic events and decision support tools to permit targeted individualized care. In this review, we examine future directions and emerging technologies in neuromonitoring including: (1) device development, (2) what is the current limitation(s) of MMM in its present format(s), (3) what would improve the ability of MMM to enhance neurocritical care, and (4) how do we develop evidence for use of MMM?
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There is an increased focus on evaluating processes of care, particularly in the high acuity and cost environment of intensive care. Evaluation of neurocritical-specific care and evidence-based protocol implementation are needed to effectively determine optimal processes of care and effect on patient outcomes. General quality measures to evaluate intensive care unit (ICU) processes of care have been proposed; however, applicability of these measures in neurocritical care populations has not been established. ⋯ Similarly, implementation of evidence-based protocol-directed care can enhance outcome in the neurocritical care population. There is significant evidence to support suggested quality indicators for the general ICU population, but limited research regarding specific use in neurocritical care. Quality indices for neurocritical care have been proposed; however, additional research is needed to further validate measures.