The Journal of neuroscience nursing : journal of the American Association of Neuroscience Nurses
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Multicenter Study Comparative Study
Monitoring and sedation differences in the management of severe head injury and subarachnoid hemorrhage among neurocritical care centers.
The emergence of specialized neurocritical care (NCC) centers has been associated with an improved survival of patients with severe traumatic brain injury or subarachnoid hemorrhage. However, there are no established guidelines on sedation strategy or the frequency of evaluating the level of consciousness using the neurological wake-up test (NWT) in sedated NCC patients. ⋯ Although Scandinavian countries have similar healthcare systems, there were marked differences among the participating NCC centers in the choice of monitoring tools and sedatives and the routine use of the NWT. These differences likely reflect different clinical management traditions and a lack of evidence-based guidelines in routine NCC.