Intracranial Pressure Monitoring: Concepts in Evaluation and Measurement

Intracranial pressure (ICP) measurement is an extremely important part of the neurosurgical armamentarium. The raised ICP the is not only the commonest cause of death in neurosurgical patients, it is extremely common in patients suffering from head injury. The effective treatment of raise ICP has been shown to decrease mortality. Obviously, an understanding of the principles of ICP measurement is an important prerequisite consideration to the disturbances of brain function that follow head injury. ICP monitoring has been used in subarachnoid hemorrhage, hydrocephalus, brain tumors, infarctions, non traumatic intracerebral hemorrhage, prognostication and treatment, but the most prominent use is in the field of head trauma. Since the preponderance of available literature deals with its use in trauma, the greater part of this review will inevitably deal with head injury.