Brain Tissue Oxygen Monitoring and the Intersection of Brain and Lung: A Comprehensive Review

No clue how feasible this would be at regular hospitals and what the hell good such monitoring does. What interventions could occur based on this knowledge? We'll never know since there is NO one in the whole world we can ask such fuckingly simple questions of.

Brain Tissue Oxygen Monitoring and the Intersection of Brain and Lung: A Comprehensive Review

1. Laura B Ngwenya, MD PhD,
2. John F Burke, MD PhD and
3. Geoffrey T Manley, MD PhD⇑

+ Author Affiliations

1. Department of Neurological Surgery, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco General Hospital, and the Brain and Spinal Injury Center, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, California 94110.

Abstract

Traumatic brain injury is a problem that affects millions of Americans yearly and for which there is no definitive treatment that improves outcome. Continuous brain tissue oxygen (P_btO2) monitoring is a complement to traditional brain monitoring techniques, such as intracranial pressure and cerebral perfusion pressure. P_btO2 monitoring has not yet become a clinical standard of care, due to several unresolved questions. In this review, we discuss the rationale and technology of P_btO2 monitoring. We review the literature, both historic and current, and show that continuous P_btO2 monitoring is feasible and useful in patient management. P_btO2 numbers reflect cerebral blood flow and oxygen diffusion. Thus, continuous monitoring of P_btO2 yields important information about both the brain and the lung. The preclinical and clinical studies demonstrating these findings are discussed. In this review, we demonstrate that patient management in a P_btO2-directed fashion is not the sole answer to the problem of treating traumatic brain injury but is an important adjunct to the armamentarium of multimodal neuromonitoring.