[The postoperative monitoring of intracranial pressure in patients in the acute period of aneurysmatic hemorrhage]

Abstract

Changes in intracranial pressure (ICP) and cerebral circulation were evaluated from Doppler transcranial ultrasound (DTU) in 29 patients with spontaneous aneurysmal hemorrhage in acute rupture. There is a tendency for the pulse wave amplitude (PWA) of ICP to increase concurrently with higher ICP values (r = 0.768, p < 0.01), the tendency being smoother in patients with severe diffuse spasm (r = 0.573, p < 0.01). There was also a linear correlation between the ICP values and the pulse index of blood flow velocity (r = 0.783, p < 0.01). Evidence is given for the possibility of indirect assessment of ICP from DTU data and for that of indirect evaluation of cerebral perfusion from ICP monitoring data. In the latter case, the authors used a ICP PWA ratio. The findings suggest that the decrease in PWA/ICP values by less than 0.2 during intracranial hypertension and severe diffuse arterial spasm corresponds to the reduction in cerebral blood filling beyond the critical values.