Articles: traumatic-brain-injuries.
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Intensive care medicine · Oct 2022
ReviewIntracranial pressure: current perspectives on physiology and monitoring.
Intracranial pressure (ICP) monitoring is now viewed as integral to the clinical care of many life-threatening brain insults, such as severe traumatic brain injury, subarachnoid hemorrhage, and malignant stroke. It serves to warn of expanding intracranial mass lesions, to prevent or treat herniation events as well as pressure elevation which impedes nutrient delivery to the brain. It facilitates the calculation of cerebral perfusion pressure (CPP) and the estimation of cerebrovascular autoregulatory status. ⋯ ICP is typically assessed invasively but a number of emerging, non-invasive technologies with inherently lower risk are showing promise. In selected cases, additional neuromonitoring can be used to assist in the interpretation of ICP monitoring information and adapt directed treatment accordingly. Additional efforts to expand the evidence base relevant to ICP monitoring, related technologies and management remain a high priority in neurosurgery and neurocritical care.
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Traumatic brain injury is one of the leading causes of mortality and morbidity in children worldwide. In severe cases, high intracranial pressure is the most frequent cause of death. When first-line medical management fails, the neurosurgical procedure of decompressive craniectomy (DC) has been proposed for controlling intracranial pressure and improving the long-term outcomes for children with severe traumatic brain injury. ⋯ Furthermore, most research comes from retrospective observational studies and case series. This narrative review considers the strength of evidence for the use of DC in both a high income country and low-and-middle income country setting and examine how we can improve study design to better assess the efficacy of this procedure and increase the clinical translatability of results to centers worldwide. Specifically, we argue for a need for further studies with higher pediatric participant numbers, multicenter collaboration, and the use of a more consistent methodology to enable comparability of results among settings.
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J Neurosurg Anesthesiol · Oct 2022
Observational StudyA Pilot Prospective Observational Study of Cerebral Autoregulation and 12-Month Outcomes in Children With Complex Mild Traumatic Brain Injury: The Argument for Sufficiency Conditions Affecting TBI Outcomes.
The relationship between cerebral autoregulation and outcomes in pediatric complex mild traumatic brain injury (TBI) is unknown, and explored in this study. ⋯ Two-thirds of children with complex mild TBI experienced incomplete functional recovery at 1 year. The co-occurrence of hypotension and cerebral autoregulation may be a sufficiency condition needed to affect TBI outcomes.
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Meta Analysis
The Impact of Short-Term Hyperoxia on Cerebral Metabolism: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.
Cerebral ischemia due to hypoxia is a major cause of secondary brain injury and is associated with higher morbidity and mortality in patients with acute brain injury. Hyperoxia could improve energetic dysfunction in the brain in this setting. Our objectives were to perform a systematic review and meta-analysis of the current literature and to assess the impact of normobaric hyperoxia on brain metabolism by using cerebral microdialysis. ⋯ Normobaric hyperoxia may improve cerebral metabolic disturbances in patients with acute brain injury. The clinical impact of such effects needs to be further elucidated.
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Fas is one of the main death receptors of the extrinsic pathway of apoptosis. A study has reported higher Fas expression in brain samples of non-surviving TBI patients than in survivors. The objective of our current study was to determine whether there is an association between Fas concentrations in blood and mortality of isolated TBI patients. ⋯ Non-surviving (n = 23) compared to surviving patients (n = 57) had higher age (p = 0.01), lower GCS (p = 0.001), higher APACHE-II score (p < 0.001), higher ICP (p = 0.01), higher CT findings with high risk of death (p = 0.02) and higher serum Fas concentrations (p < 0.001). We found in regression analyses an association between serum Fas levels and mortality of TBI patients after controlling for CT findings, age and CGS (OR = 1.006; 95% CI 1.001-1.011; p = 0.02), and after controlling for CT findings, ICP and APACHE-II (OR = 1.007; 95% CI 1.001-1.012; p = 0.02). Thus, the most interesting and novel finding in this study is the association between high blood Fas concentrations and mortality in TBI patients.