Milestones in the history of neurocritical care.

Over the last century, significant milestones have been achieved in managing critical illness and diagnosing and treating neurological diseases. Building upon these milestones, the field of neurocritical care emerged in the 1980 and 1990 s at the convergence of critical care medicine and acute neurological treatment. This comprehensive review presents a historical account of key developments in neurocritical care in both the United States and Europe, with a special emphasis on German contributions.

Bilateral tonic seizures vs. bilateral tonic events in critically ill patients: differences in semiology.

Purpose: Our primary aim was to analyze bilateral epileptic tonic seizures (ETS) and bilateral non-epileptic tonic events (NTE) in critically ill patients. Our secondary aim was to analyze ETS per their epileptogenic zone.

Methods: We performed a retrospective analysis of clinical signs in patients with bilateral ETS and NTE.

Blood pressure management in ischemic stroke patients undergoing mechanical thrombectomy.

The relationship between presenting blood pressure in acute ischemic stroke patients and outcome is complex. Several studies have demonstrated a U-shaped curve with worse outcomes when blood pressure is high or low. The American Heart Association/American Stroke Association guidelines recommend values of blood pressure < 185/110 mmHg in patients treated with intravenous t-PA and "permissive hypertension" up to 220/120 mmHg in those not treated with intravenous t-PA.

The intersection of prognostication and code status in patients with severe brain injury.

Accurately estimating the prognosis of brain injury patients can be difficult, especially early in their course. Prognostication is important because it largely determines the care level we provide, from aggressive treatment for patients we predict could have a good outcome to withdrawal of treatment for those we expect will have a poor outcome. Accurate prognostication is required for ethical decision-making.

Big data and predictive analytics in neurocritical care.

Purpose Of Review: To describe predictive data and workflow in the intensive care unit when managing neurologically ill patients.

Recent Findings: In the era of Big Data in medicine, intensive critical care units are data-rich environments. Neurocritical care adds another layer of data with advanced multimodal monitoring to prevent secondary brain injury from ischemia, tissue hypoxia, and a cascade of ongoing metabolic events.

Acute Bilateral Ophthalmoplegia Due to Vertebrobasilar Dolichoectasia: A Report of Two Cases.

BACKGROUND Vertebrobasilar dolichoectasia (VBD) is a complex progressive arterial disease characterized by dilation, elongation, and tortuosity of the vertebral and basilar arteries, and may be congenital or acquired. VBD may lead to progressive compression of the brainstem, cranial nerve abnormalities, and intracranial hemorrhage, but may also be associated with arterial thrombosis, with ischemic stroke as the most common clinical outcome. CASE REPORT Two cases of VBD are presented, both with acute bilateral ophthalmoplegia and cranial nerve palsies, and vertebrobasilar arterial thrombosis that resulted in ischemic stroke.

Spinal cord infarct caused from suspected fibrocartilaginous embolism.

Introduction: We report a case of spinal cord infarct as a result of suspected fibrocartilaginous embolism (FCE).

Case Presentation: A 23-year-old man presented with sudden onset cervical and upper back pain followed by progressive weakness in his extremities after throwing a baseball. History, neurologic examination and spinal cord imaging were consistent with spinal cord infarct.

Inflammatory Pseudotumor of the Spleen.

Isolated splenic inflammatory pseudotumors (IPT) are extremely rare, typically benign, inflammatory lesions with varied clinical presentations that pose a diagnostic challenge to clinicians due to their similarity in appearance to neoplasms. We present the case of a young woman diagnosed with a splenic IPT following investigation for persistent anemia, raised inflammatory markers, and polyclonal hypergammaglobulinemia, whose symptoms resolved completely following splenectomy. This case highlights the need to consider this diagnosis when evaluating patients with a splenic mass of unknown etiology.

Information technology in critical care: review of monitoring and data acquisition systems for patient care and research.

There is a broad consensus that 21st century health care will require intensive use of information technology to acquire and analyze data and then manage and disseminate information extracted from the data. No area is more data intensive than the intensive care unit. While there have been major improvements in intensive care monitoring, the medical industry, for the most part, has not incorporated many of the advances in computer science, biomedical engineering, signal processing, and mathematics that many other industries have embraced.

The International Multidisciplinary Consensus Conference on Multimodality Monitoring in Neurocritical Care: evidentiary tables: a statement for healthcare professionals from the Neurocritical Care Society and the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine.

A variety of technologies have been developed to assist decision-making during the management of patients with acute brain injury who require intensive care. A large body of research has been generated describing these various technologies. The Neurocritical Care Society (NCS) in collaboration with the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine (ESICM), the Society for Critical Care Medicine (SCCM), and the Latin America Brain Injury Consortium (LABIC) organized an international, multidisciplinary consensus conference to perform a systematic review of the published literature to help develop evidence-based practice recommendations on bedside physiologic monitoring.

The International Multidisciplinary Consensus Conference on Multimodality Monitoring in Neurocritical Care: a list of recommendations and additional conclusions: a statement for healthcare professionals from the Neurocritical Care Society and the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine.

Careful patient monitoring using a variety of techniques including clinical and laboratory evaluation, bedside physiological monitoring with continuous or non-continuous techniques and imaging is fundamental to the care of patients who require neurocritical care. How best to perform and use bedside monitoring is still being elucidated. To create a basic platform for care and a foundation for further research the Neurocritical Care Society in collaboration with the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine, the Society for Critical Care Medicine and the Latin America Brain Injury Consortium organized an international, multidisciplinary consensus conference to develop recommendations about physiologic bedside monitoring.

Consensus summary statement of the International Multidisciplinary Consensus Conference on Multimodality Monitoring in Neurocritical Care: a statement for healthcare professionals from the Neurocritical Care Society and the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine.

Neurocritical care depends, in part, on careful patient monitoring but as yet there are little data on what processes are the most important to monitor, how these should be monitored, and whether monitoring these processes is cost-effective and impacts outcome. At the same time, bioinformatics is a rapidly emerging field in critical care but as yet there is little agreement or standardization on what information is important and how it should be displayed and analyzed. The Neurocritical Care Society in collaboration with the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine, the Society for Critical Care Medicine, and the Latin America Brain Injury Consortium organized an international, multidisciplinary consensus conference to begin to address these needs.

Multimodality monitoring: informatics, integration data display and analysis.

The goal of multimodality neuromonitoring is to provide continuous, real-time assessment of brain physiology to prevent, detect, and attenuate secondary brain injury. Clinical informatics deals with biomedical data, information, and knowledge including their acquisition, storage, retrieval, and optimal use for clinical decision-making. An electronic literature search was conducted for English language articles describing the use of informatics in the intensive care unit setting from January 1990 to August 2013.

Consensus summary statement of the International Multidisciplinary Consensus Conference on Multimodality Monitoring in Neurocritical Care : a statement for healthcare professionals from the Neurocritical Care Society and the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine.

Neurocritical care depends, in part, on careful patient monitoring but as yet there are little data on what processes are the most important to monitor, how these should be monitored, and whether monitoring these processes is cost-effective and impacts outcome. At the same time, bioinformatics is a rapidly emerging field in critical care but as yet there is little agreement or standardization on what information is important and how it should be displayed and analyzed. The Neurocritical Care Society in collaboration with the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine, the Society for Critical Care Medicine, and the Latin America Brain Injury Consortium organized an international, multidisciplinary consensus conference to begin to address these needs.

History of brain death as death: 1968 to the present.

The concept of brain death was formulated in 1968 in the landmark report A Definition of Irreversible Coma. While brain death has been widely accepted as a determination of death throughout the world, many of the controversies that surround it have not been settled. Some may be rooted in a misconstruction about the history of brain death.

How prostate-specific membrane antigen level may be correlated with stemness in prostate cancer stem cell-like cell populations?

Background: Prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA) is a widely used targeted molecule in prostate patients. The present research, attempts to support the hypothesis that PSMA expression in prostate cancer stem cell-like (CSC) cell populations may be correlated with nanog and other transcription factors in different stages of prostate carcinomas.

Materials And Methods: To provide more accurate evidence of the above, a population of prostate CSCs was isolated and analyzed using different protocols.

Brain Tissue Oxygen Monitoring in Neurocritical Care.

Brain injury results from ischemia, tissue hypoxia, and a cascade of secondary events. The cornerstone of neurocritical care management is optimization and maintenance of cerebral blood flow (CBF) and oxygen and substrate delivery to prevent or attenuate this secondary damage. New techniques for monitoring brain tissue oxygen tension (PtiO2) are now available.

Moyamoya disease associated with asymptomatic mosaic Turner syndrome: a rare cause of hemorrhagic stroke.

Moyamoya disease is a rare cerebrovascular anomaly involving the intracranial carotid arteries that can present clinically with either ischemic or hemorrhagic disease. Moyamoya syndrome, indistinguishable from moyamoya disease at presentation, is associated with multiple clinical conditions including neurofibromatosis type 1, autoimmune disease, prior radiation therapy, Down syndrome, and Turner syndrome. We present the first reported case of an adult patient with previously unrecognized mosaic Turner syndrome with acute subarachnoid and intracerebral hemorrhage as the initial manifestation of moyamoya syndrome.

Prognosis of coma after cardiac arrest in the era of hypothermia.

Purpose Of Review: Outcome prediction is more difficult in comatose survivors of cardiac arrest who are treated with hypothermia than in those who are kept normothermic. This article compares prognostication measures in these two groups of patients.

Recent Findings: The introduction of therapeutic hypothermia for cardiac arrest has resulted in reduced mortality and better neurologic outcomes among survivors.

Critical care management in acute ischemic stroke.

Neurocritical care has evolved over the past 20 years in parallel with the growth of critical care medicine and the stunning developments in the fields of neurology and neurosurgery. Although clinical trials are needed, there is preliminary evidence that induced hypertension and hypothermia can improve outcomes. The optimal threshold for transfusion of red cells remains unknown in patients with ischemic stroke and similarly further studies are needed to examine glycemic control and identify which patients may benefit most from aggressive insulin therapy.

Multimodal monitoring and neurocritical care bioinformatics.

Neurocritical care bioinformatics is a new field that focuses on the acquisition, storage and analysis of physiological and other data relevant to the bedside care of patients with acute neurological conditions such as traumatic brain injury or stroke. The main focus of neurocritical care for these conditions relates to prevention, detection and management of secondary brain injury, which relies heavily on monitoring of systemic and cerebral parameters (such as blood-pressure level and intracranial pressure). Advanced neuromonitoring tools also exist that enable measurement of brain tissue oxygen tension, cerebral oxygen utilization, and aerobic metabolism.

Fever is associated with third ventricular shift after intracerebral hemorrhage: pathophysiologic implications.

Background: Studies have shown the detrimental effect of increased temperature on brain injury. Fever is common after intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH). The term 'central fever' is often used when no cause is identified.