Significance of intracranial pressure pulse morphology in pediatric traumatc brain injury

We investigated the relationship between the intracranial pulse pressure (ICP/sub PP/) and the mean intracranial pressure (ICP/sub M/). In adult patients, several research groups have described a linear relationship between ICP/sub PP/ and ICP/sub M/ within the range of cerebral autoregulation. Current monitoring and therapy are mainly based on the mean ICP/sub M/, since it is believed that the ICP/sub M/ contains most of the information provided by the other pulse morphology metrics. In this paper we attempt to answer whether there is further information within the ICP morphology not explained by ICP/sub M/ that might be of prognostic significance. We screened ICP records of 42 patients admitted to the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit at Doernbecher Children's Hospital for segments in which the ICP/sub M/ varied at least 5 mmHg during a 1-hour period. We found 54 segments in 9 different pediatric TBI patients (ages 0.2-17.8 years, mean=9.9 years). ICP/sub PP/ and ICP/sub M/ were calculated for each pulse using an automatic pressure detection algorithm. The coefficient of linear correlation r was > 0.70 in 43/54 segments (p 0.90 only in 16/54 segments (p=NS) . This result and visual inspection of ICP/sub PP/ vs. ICP/sub M/ density plots suggest that ICP pulse pressure is not fully explained by the ICP M.