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BackgroundThis paper introduces the 7/5/2011al Pupil index (NPi), a sensitive measure of pupil reactivity and an early indicator of increasing intracranial pressure (ICP). This may occur in patients with severe traumatic brain injury (TBI), aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage, or intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH).Methods134 patients (mean age 46 years, range 18–87 years, 54 women and 80 men) in the intensive care units at eight different clinical sites were enrolled in the study. Pupillary examination was performed using a portable hand-held pupillometer.ResultsPatients with abnormal pupillary light reactivity had an average peak ICP of 30.5 mmHg versus 19.6 mmHg for the normal pupil reactivity population (P = 0.0014). Patients with “nonreactive pupils” had the highest peaks of ICP (mean = 33.8 mmHg, P = 0.0046). In the group of patients with abnormal pupillary reactivity, we found that the first evidence of pupil abnormality occurred, on average, 15.9 hours prior to the time of the peak of ICP.ConclusionsAutomated pupillary assessment was used in patients with possible increased ICP. Using NPi, we were able to identify a trend of inverse relationship between decreasing pupil reactivity and increasing ICP. Quantitative measurement and classification of pupillary reactivity using NPi may be a useful tool in the early management of patients with causes of increased ICP.

The investigators undertook a retrospective analysis of ventriculostomy infections to evaluate their relationship to monitoring duration and prophylactic catheter exchange. In 1984, the results of an epidemiological study of ventriculostomy-related infection were published. One of the conclusions of the paper was that the incidence of ventriculostomy-related infections rose after 5 days of monitoring. This led to the recommendation that catheters be prophylactically changed at 5-day intervals if prolonged monitoring was required. A recent randomized prospective study on central venous catheters showed no reduction in infection with prophylactic catheter exchanges. This has led the authors to reexamine their experience with ventriculostomy infections. Data on 584 severely head injured patients with ventriculostomies were prospectively collected in two data banks, The Traumatic Coma Data Bank and The Medical College of Virginia Neurocore Data Bank. These data were retrospectively analyzed for factors associated with ventriculostomy related infections. It was found that there is a relationship of ventriculitis to monitoring duration but it is not simple or linear. There is a rising risk of infection over the first 10 days, but infection then becomes very unlikely despite a population that continues to be at risk. Patients in whom catheters were replaced prior to 5 days did not have a lower infection rate than those whose catheters were exchanged at more than 5-day intervals. Based on these data, it is recommended that ventriculostomy catheters for intracranial pressure monitoring be removed as quickly as possible, and in circumstances in which prolonged monitoring is required, there appears to be no benefit from catheter exchange.

Rapid triage and decision-making in the treatment of traumatic brain injury (TBI) present challenging dilemma in "resource poor" environments such as the battlefield and developing areas of the world. There is an urgent need for additional tools to guide treatment of TBI. The aim of this review is to establish the possible use of diagnostic TBI biomarkers in (1) identifying diffuse and focal brain injury and (2) assess their potential for determining outcome, intracranial pressure (ICP), and responses to therapy. At present, there is insufficient literature to support a role for diagnostic biomarkers in distinguishing focal and diffuse injury or for accurate determination of raised ICP. Presently, neurofilament (NF), S100β, glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP), and ubiquitin carboxyl terminal hydrolase-L1 (UCH-L1) seemed to have the best potential as diagnostic biomarkers for distinguishing focal and diffuse injury, whereas C-tau, neuron-specific enolase (NSE), S100β, GFAP, and spectrin breakdown products (SBDPs) appear to be candidates for ICP reflective biomarkers. With the combinations of different pathophysiology related to each biomarker, a multibiomarker analysis seems to be effective and would likely increase diagnostic accuracy. There is limited research focusing on the differential diagnostic properties of biomarkers in TBI. This fact warrants the need for greater efforts to innovate sensitive and reliable biomarkers. We advocate awareness and inclusion of the differentiation of injury type and ICP elevation in further studies with brain injury biomarkers.