Evoked potentials in severe head injury--analysis and relation to outcome.

How reliable is the predictive value of SEP (somatosensory evoked potentials) patterns in severe brain damage with special regard to the bilateral loss of cortical responses?

“…It is possible that the predominant neuroradiological finding of traumatic brainstem injury, as in our case, might have different implications for structural and functional recovery of the central somatosensory system compared to diffuse cerebral hypoxia. This hypothesis is in perfect agreement with results of other recent studies, which, by a systematic analysis (overview, Table 3), show that in quite a few cases of traumatic coma the initial BLCR pattern did not exclude regaining consciousness and recovery from severe neurological deficit [1,2,18,19]. Summarizing all cases including our own patient, we found 16 patients reported who underline the exceptions of the prognostic rule.…”

Predictive value of somatosensory evoked potentials for awakening from coma*

“…Of these 12, seven articles reported on traumatic coma in 456 children and adults, but the results could not be separated by age group (5)(6)(7)(8)(9)(10)(11). Data were compiled for this mixed group separately (see Results), but not included in the figures.…”

Infant Malnutrition Affects Cortical Auditory Evoked Potentials

“…Since the number of peaks on an E P record has been a reliable measure of CNS development and function (Barnet, et al, 1975;Lindsay, Carlin, Kennedy, Fry, McInnes, & Teasdale, 1981;Narayan, Greenberg, Miller, Enas, Choi, Kishare, Selhorst, Lutz, & Becker, 1981), a simple count of the number of peaks on the record was used as one method of analysis. The criterion for a peak was a change of 5 ~v or more between adjacent positive and negative peaks.…”