Abstract
Background
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is among the most important public health problems associated with high healthcare and social burden and significant mortality and morbidity. Overall low income countries have the highest TBI associated mortality and morbidity.
Aim of the Work
Some studies have demonstrated that intracranial pressure (ICP) monitoring reduces the mortality of traumatic brain injury (TBI). But other studies have shown that ICP monitoring is associated with increased mortality.
Patients and Methods
Systematic review of Published English literature from 2000 to 2017. Using appropriate combinations of MeSH terms and key words, including intracranial pressure, intracranial hypertension, ICP monitor, intracranial pressure monitoring, TBI traumatic brain injury, and craniocerebral trauma. Brain Trauma Foundation guidelines, mortality. We performed this relatively wide search to include the maximum number of relevant patients.
Results
In total, 2552 studies were identified and screened for retrieval using the strategy described above. After careening the title and abstract, 1968 studies were excluded and 554 were retrieved and subjected to detailed evaluations. Based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria, 527 of those studies were excluded, and thus 27 studies were included in the systematic review. All included studies were published, peer-previewed papers.
Conclusion
ICP monitoring may play a role in decreasing the rate of electrolyte disturbances, rate of renal failure, and increasing favorable functional outcome. However, there was no significant effect for reducing the risk of hospital mortality, lowering occurrence rate of pulmonary infection, use of mechanical ventilation and duration of hospital stays. RCTs with larger sample size are necessary to further support the current results.
Highlighting intracranial pressure monitoring in patients with severe acute brain trauma
