Therapeutic hypothermia for elevated intracranial pressure in traumatic brain injury: does it do more harm than good?

Abstract

I have reviewed above article by Andrews et al. [1] with great interest. Reading this article has evidently produced me with a mixed feeling of both satisfying and unsatisfying emotional feedback for the reasons I have carefully outlined below. This is yet another disappointment to the multisubspecialty medical and surgical communities, because now the concept and application of hypothermia, or perhaps better termed as targeted temperature modulation, seems to be failing in neuro applications. As many readers are likely aware of, Nielsen et al. [2] have reported a negative trial of comparing 33 degrees Celsius versus 36 degrees Celsius after cardiac arrest at the end of 2013. After questioning the true value of hypothermia in cardiac arrest victims, it is now being questioned as to whether applying hypothermia in traumatic brain injury (TBI) would confer any benefits in long term outcomes.