Articles: neurocritical-care.
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How continuous cerebral autoregulation (CCA) knowledge should be optimally gained and interpreted is still an active area of research and refinement. We now experience a unique situation of having indices clinically available before definitive evidence of benefit or practice guidelines, in a moment when high rates of institutional variability exist both in the application of monitoring as well as in monitoring-guided treatments. Responses from 47 international clinicians, experts in this field, were collected with polling and discussion of the results. ⋯ There was nearly universal interest to participate in an RCT, with agreement that the research community must together determine end points and interventions to reduce wasted effort and time, and that investigations should include the following: the most appropriate way of inclusion of CCA into the clinical workflow; whether CCA-guided interventions should be prophylactic, proactive; or reactive; and whether a CCA-centric (unimodal) or a multimodal monitoring-integrated tiered therapy approach should be adopted. Pediatric and neonatal populations were highlighted as having urgent need and even more plausibility than adults. On the whole, the initiative was enthusiastically embraced by the experts, with the general feeling that a strong push should be now made by the community to convert the plausible benefits of CCA monitoring, already implemented in some centers, into a more standardized and RCT-validated clinical reality.
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Gunshot wounds to the head (GSWH) are a cause of severe penetrating traumatic brain injury (TBI). Although multimodal neuromonitoring has been increasingly used in blunt pediatric TBI, its role in the pediatric population with GSWH is not known. We report on 3 patients who received multimodal neuromonitoring as part of clinical management at our institution and review the existing literature on pediatric GSWH. ⋯ Use of ICP and Pbto2 multimodality neuromonitoring enabled specific management for intracranial hypertension or brain tissue hypoxia episodes that occurred independently of one another. Multimodality neuromonitoring has not been studied extensively in pediatric GSWH; however, its use may provide a more complete picture of patient injury and prognosis without significant added procedural risk.
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The primary aim was to explore the concept of isolated and combined threshold-insults for brain tissue oxygenation (pbtO2) in relation to outcome in traumatic brain injury (TBI). ⋯ Low pbtO2, under 25 mmHg and particularly below 15 mmHg, for longer durations and in combination with disturbances in global cerebral physiological variables were associated with poor outcome and may indicate detrimental ischaemic hypoxia. Prospective trials are needed to determine if pbtO2-directed therapy is beneficial, at what individualised pbtO2 threshold therapies are warranted, and how this may depend on the presence/absence of concurrent cerebral physiological disturbances.
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Conflicting findings exist regarding the influence of sex on the development, treatment, course, and outcome of status epilepticus (SE). Our study aimed to investigate sex-related disparities in adult SE patients, focusing on treatment, disease course, and outcome at two Swiss academic medical centers. ⋯ This study identified sex-related disparities in the clinical features, treatment modalities, and outcome of adult patients with SE with women being at a disadvantage, implying that sex-based factors must be considered when formulating strategies for managing SE and forecasting outcomes.