Potential for thermal damage to the blood-brain barrier during craniotomy: implications for intracortical recording microelectrodes.

Objective: Our objective was to determine how readily disruption of the blood-brain barrier (BBB) occurred as a result of bone drilling during a craniotomy to implant microelectrodes in rat cortex. While the phenomenon of heat production during bone drilling is well known, practices to evade damage to the underlying brain tissue are inconsistently practiced and reported in the literature.

Approach: We conducted a review of the intracortical microelectrode literature to summarize typical approaches to mitigate drill heating during rodent craniotomies.