The assessment of brain stem function in comatose patients is now regular medical practice world wide. When envisaging a diagnosis of brain stem death it is essential, firstly, to establish that the patient is suffering from irremediable structural brain damage of known cause, and, secondly, to exclude the primary or contributory role of reversible causes of apnoeic coma with absent brain stem ...

Of ten patients with Reye's syndrome, there were five with stage II or III coma where EEGs revealed 14 c/sec positive bursts in a background of diffuse delta waves. Positive bursts disappeared upon EEG improvement in two survivors and when the EEG became nearly isoelectric in two other patients. Although 14 and 6 c/sec positive bursts are seen commonly during sleep in normal young persons, thei...

OBJECTIVE Transport of critically ill intensive care unit patients may be hazardous. We examined whether brain oxygen (brain tissue oxygen partial pressure [PbtO2]) is influenced by transport to and from a follow-up head computed tomography (transport head computed tomography [tHCT]) scan. METHODS Forty-five patients (24 men, 21 women; Glasgow Coma Scale score < or =8; mean age, 47.3 +/- 19.0...

Abstract Funding Acknowledgements Type of funding sources: None. Introduction and objectives Treatment with therapeutic hypothermia after cardiac arrest remains controversial. It is still unclear how long it takes these patients to recover neurological responsiveness, the time until awakening varies widely. The aim our study was identify who had a later factors related late post-arrest awakenin...

OBJECTIVE Electroencephalographic status epilepticus occurs in 9-35% of comatose patients after cardiac arrest. Mortality is 90-100%. It is unclear whether (some) seizure patterns represent a condition in which anti-epileptic treatment may improve outcome, or severe ischemic damage, in which treatment is futile. We explored current treatment practice and its effect on patients' outcome. METHO...

BACKGROUND Comatose acute stroke patients are at high risk of malnutrition, especially hypoproteinemia. However, when to start and how to provide nutrition to these patients are unclear. The purpose of this study was to determine the optimum timing and methods of nutritional supplementation to comatose acute stroke patients. METHODS A total of 273 comatose acute stoke patients who were unable...

A comatose patient required a tracheostomy. His Glasgow Coma Score was 4 and he was intubated with mydriatic and isochoric pupils, without corneal and light reflexes. Two previous EEGs showed signs of severe and diffuse encephalopathy (arreactive delta and theta rhythms) and there were no somatosensory evoked potentials recordable at the scalp. When the tracheostomy procedure was carried out, t...

Introduction The diffusion of BLS (Basic Life Support) and ALS (Advanced Life Support) has improved survival in patients that experienced cardiac arrest (CA). In after-ROSC comatose patients Therapeutic Hypothermia (TH), lowering the core temperature for 24 hours, has been demonstrated to ameliorate neurological outcome, but unfortunately during that period it is not possible to evaluate patien...

PURPOSE We assessed the accuracy of transcranial Doppler (TCD) in helping to diagnose nonconvulsive status epilepticus (NCSE) in comatose patients admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) for acute neurological disorders at high risk for NCSE. METHODS A 2-year prospective observational study in 38 consecutive patients requiring continuous electroencephalography (EEG) monitoring and intracran...

The present study aims to compare quality of life of victims with long and short term post-traumatic amnesia and to analyze the relation between quality of life and length of amnesia, including or not the comatose period. This prospective cohort study, gathered data during the hospital stay and 3 and 6 months post- trauma. Blunt traumatic brain injury patients, over 14 years old, with no prior ...