Is keeping cool still hot? An update on hypothermia in brain injury

The purpose of this review is to examine recent research results for hypothermia as a treatment for brain injury.

One potential application for hypothermia is as a means of control of elevated intracranial pressure in which hypothermia is induced when intracranial pressure becomes uncontrollable by conventional means. A second application is as a neuroprotectant in which hypothermia is induced very early and maintained for a specified period as a means of diminishing the biochemical cascade that produces secondary brain injury. The clinical data indicate that hypothermia reduces elevated intracranial pressure, but no conclusion can be drawn as to whether this improves outcome over existing techniques (eg, mannitol and barbiturates). There is little evidence that hypothermia acts as a neuroprotectant in trials, all of which used treatment windows of over 4 hours.

Hypothermia is a useful adjunct to barbiturates and mannitol to control elevated intracranial pressure. The results of trials that have tested systemic hypothermia as a neuroprotectant have been negative or equivocal, and cooling may have been induced outside the treatment window.