Management of hyperthermia in traumatic brain injury
- 1 April 2002
- journal article
- review article
- Published by Ovid Technologies (Wolters Kluwer Health) in Current Opinion in Critical Care
- Vol. 8 (2), 106-110
- https://doi.org/10.1097/00075198-200204000-00003
Abstract
Recently there has been much interest in the use of hypothermia in the management of the brain-injured patient and its effect on outcome. Most of these studies examine the use of hypothermia compared with normothermia of 37°C and have failed to demonstrate a benefit in the treatment groups, but what is normothermia in the brain-injured patient? Good epidemiologic evidence suggests that the vast majority of patients admitted to an ICU environment will develop a fever. The development of fever is clearly associated with a worse prognosis. There is now a better understanding of the possible mechanism of harm of fever and the side effects of cooling. Several treatment options for controlling temperature are discussed. Despite a sound physiologic argument for controlling fever in the brain-injured patient, there is no evidence that doing so will improve outcome.Keywords
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