Neurocritical care
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Traumatic brain injury (TBI) incurs substantial health and economic burden, as it is the leading reason for death and disability globally. Endocrine abnormalities are no longer considered a rare complication of TBI. The reported prevalence is variable across studies, depending on the time frame of injury, time and type of testing, and variability in hormonal values considered normal across different studies. ⋯ The management of hypopituitarism following TBI involves hormonal replacement therapy. It is essential for health care providers to be aware of this complication because at times, symptoms may be subtle and may be mistaken to be caused by brain injury itself. There is a need for stronger evidence for establishing recommendations for optimum management so that they can be incorporated as standard of care in TBI management.
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Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation is a potentially lifesaving intervention for children with severe cardiac or respiratory failure. It is used with increasing frequency and in increasingly more complex and severe diseases. ⋯ These include structural imaging with computed tomography and ultrasound, cerebral blood flow monitoring with near-infrared spectroscopy and transcranial Doppler ultrasound, and physiological monitoring with electroencephalography and plasma biomarkers. We highlight areas of need and emerging advances that will improve our understanding of neurological injury related to extracorporeal membrane oxygenation and help to reduce the burden of neurological sequelae in these children.
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Critically ill children with acute neurologic dysfunction are at risk for a variety of complications that can be detected by noninvasive bedside neuromonitoring. Continuous electroencephalography (cEEG) is the most widely available and utilized form of neuromonitoring in the pediatric intensive care unit. In this article, we review the role of cEEG and the emerging role of quantitative EEG (qEEG) in this patient population. cEEG has long been established as the gold standard for detecting seizures in critically ill children and assessing treatment response, and its role in background assessment and neuroprognostication after brain injury is also discussed. We explore the emerging utility of both cEEG and qEEG as biomarkers of degree of cerebral dysfunction after specific injuries and their ability to detect both neurologic deterioration and improvement.
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Multicenter Study
Recommendations from the Working Group on Neuroimaging.
Over the past 5 decades, advances in neuroimaging have yielded insights into the pathophysiologic mechanisms that cause disorders of consciousness (DoC) in patients with severe brain injuries. Structural, functional, metabolic, and perfusion imaging studies have revealed specific neuroanatomic regions, such as the brainstem tegmentum, thalamus, posterior cingulate cortex, medial prefrontal cortex, and occipital cortex, where lesions correlate with the current or future state of consciousness. Advanced imaging modalities, such as diffusion tensor imaging, resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and task-based fMRI, have been used to improve the accuracy of diagnosis and long-term prognosis, culminating in the endorsement of fMRI for the clinical evaluation of patients with DoC in the 2018 US (task-based fMRI) and 2020 European (task-based and resting-state fMRI) guidelines. As diverse neuroimaging techniques are increasingly used for patients with DoC in research and clinical settings, the need for a standardized approach to reporting results is clear. The success of future multicenter collaborations and international trials fundamentally depends on the implementation of a shared nomenclature and infrastructure. ⋯ These CDEs will support progress in the field of DoC neuroimaging and facilitate international collaboration.