Anticipating Postoperative Delirium During Burst Suppression Using Electroencephalography

This study develops an electro-encephalography-based method for predicting postoperative delirium early during cardiac surgeries involving deep hypothermia circulatory arrest (DHCA), potentially providing an opportunity to intervene and minimize poor surgical outcome. DHCA is a surgical technique used during cardiac surgeries to facilitate repairs. Deep hypothermia is induced and supplemented by perfusion techniques to protect the brain during circulatory arrest, but concern for cerebral injury still remains.

This research studies whether or not monitoring burst suppression, an electrophysiological phenomenon observed during patient cooling and warming, helps in predicting postoperative delirium, a correlate of poor prognosis. A metric called the burst suppression duty cycle (BSDC), akin to burst suppression ratio, is formulated to characterize this electrophysiological activity.

Assuming no complications occur prior to circulatory arrest, delirium diagnoses are correlated with the time elapsed until suppression activity ceases since resuming cardiopulmonary bypass. By comparing against a benchmark the times when BSDC reaches 100%, 15 of 16 cases can be correctly predicted. Similar accuracy can be achieved when querying BSDC progress earlier during warming.

Our results show that our BSDC metric is a promising candidate for early detection of postoperative delirium, and motivates further analysis of the causal relationship between postoperative delirium and the procedure transitioning out of circulatory arrest.

The developed methodology anticipates incidences of postoperative delirium during rewarming, which potentially provides an opportunity to intervene and avert it.