Multimodality Monitoring in the Neurocritical Care Unit

This article focuses on the multiple neuromonitoring devices that can be used to collect bedside data in the neurocritical care unit and the methodology to integrate them into a multimodality monitoring system. The article describes how to apply the collected data to appreciate the physiologic changes and develop therapeutic approaches to prevent secondary injury.

The neurologic examination has served as the primary monitor for secondary brain injury in patients admitted to the neurocritical care unit. However, the International Multidisciplinary Consensus Conference on Multimodality Monitoring in Neurocritical Care concluded that frequent bedside examinations are not sufficient to detect and prevent secondary brain injury and that integration of multimodality monitoring with advanced informatics tools will most likely enhance our assessments compared to the clinical examinations alone. This article reviews the invasive and noninvasive technologies used to monitor focal and global neurophysiologic cerebral alterations.

Multimodal monitoring is still in the early stages of development. Research is still needed to establish more advanced monitors with the bioinformatics to identify useful trends from data gathered to predict clinical outcome or prevent secondary brain injury.