Intracranial pressure monitoring and treatment: a contemporary view

ICP monitoring and recording provide another important parameter in the intensive care management of many critically ill patients and have been shown to augment the clinical neurologic examination, particularly in comatose patients suffering from severe head trauma, toxic and metabolic encephalopathies, massive cerebral infarctions, and many other central nervous system insults. Once considered an experimental tool restricted exclusively to sophisticated specialty neurosurgical and neuroanesthesia intensive care units, this straightforward and rapidly evolving technology is readily available and relatively easy to apply as a bedside intensive care procedure for selected patients. Many indications of particular interest to emergency physicians are indicated. The precise role of ICP monitoring in the prehospital management of patients has not been established. At this time, the conventional treatments for presumed ICP elevations, as outlined, are the mainstays of prehospital care. ICP monitoring may have a role in more extended or lengthy interinstitutional transfers of some critically ill patients.