Abstract
In 2010 Critical Care published a large number of articles on critical care aspects of neurologic and neurosurgical conditions. These aspects included investigation of diagnostic criteria for bacterial meningitis, critical illness myopathy and their relationship to systemic inflammation. A number of studies investigated the biology of sepsis-related delirium, its biomarkers, its relationship to inflammation and its impact on outcome. Other teams reported on the use of magnetic resonance imaging, biomarkers and electroencephalogram to predict outcome in patients who were comatose following cardiac arrest. Our understanding of the pathophysiology as well as management of subarachnoid hemorrhage was addressed in several papers. Topics included the effect of hemodynamic treatment of delayed cerebral ischemia, pulmonary edema and the impact of subarachnoid hemorrhage on endocrine function. Finally, outcome from neurocritical care and patients' retrospective willingness to consent to the treatment they received were reported.
Highlights
In 2010 Critical Care published a large number of articles on critical care aspects of neurologic and neurosurgical conditions
These articles can be gathered into six key areas: diagnostic criteria, delirium and encephalopathy, predicting neurologic outcome after cardiac arrest, subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) and outcome from neurocritical care
This suggests that any elevation in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) lactate concentration above normal for the assay used could be employed as a diagnostic marker despite the difference in cut-off values caused by variance in methods, instruments and hospital laboratories
Summary
In 2010 Critical Care published a large number of articles on critical care aspects of neurologic and neurosurgical conditions These aspects included investigation of diagnostic criteria for bacterial meningitis, critical illness myopathy and their relationship to systemic inflammation. Several important contributions to the field of neurocritical care were published in Critical Care during 2010 These articles can be gathered into six key areas: diagnostic criteria, delirium and encephalopathy, predicting neurologic outcome after cardiac arrest, subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) and outcome from neurocritical care. From the 25 studies they identified, the authors concluded that CSF lactate alone had a high degree of accuracy in distinguishing between bacterial and nonbacterial meningitis and performs better than the conventional tests routinely used. A weakness of this study was that subject blood samples were only taken at two separate time points, which makes it impossible to determine the daily course of the inflammatory parameters
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