Journal of neurosurgery
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Journal of neurosurgery · Oct 1984
Effect of mannitol on ICP and CBF and correlation with pressure autoregulation in severely head-injured patients.
In a previous paper, the authors showed that mannitol causes cerebral vasoconstriction in response to blood viscosity decreases in cats. The present paper describes the changes in intracranial pressure (ICP) and cerebral blood flow (CBF) after mannitol administration in a group of severely head-injured patients with intact or defective autoregulation. The xenon-133 inhalation method was used to measure CBF. ⋯ When autoregulation is not intact there is no vasoconstriction in response to increased oxygen availability; thus, CBF increases with decreased viscosity. With the lack of vasoconstriction, the effect on ICP through dehydration is not enhanced, so that the resulting decrease in ICP is much smaller. Such a mechanism explains why osmotic agents do not change CBF but decrease ICP in normal animals or patients with intact vasoconstriction, but do (temporarily) increase CBF in the absence of major ICP changes after stroke.