Neurological critical care

Of utmost importance in the practice of neurological critical care is the treatment of cerebral edema, when possible, and the control of life-threatening seizures. In this regard, severe traumatic head injury and refractory status epilepticus are useful clinical therapeutic paradigms. Evidence-based treatment established for these conditions has, by necessity, a wider application to other much less frequent causes of coma and acute neurological illness managed in the intensive therapy unit. Therefore, this review of pediatric neurocritical care literature in 1999 highlights central clinical reports of the medical management of severe traumatic brain injury, the benzodiazepines used in the treatment of status epilepticus, and the emerging or recently appreciated encephalopathies occurring in children.