Protocols for treatment of children with severe traumatic brain injury incorporate intracranial pressure monitoring as part of a comprehensive plan to minimize secondary injuries, using either ICP and/or cerebral perfusion pressure (CPP) as the therapeutic target ¹⁾.

At least 500 children enrolled in 9 studies have demonstrated at least some association between ICP and outcome ^{2) 3) 4) 5) 6) 7) 8) 9) 10)}.

As a result, most centers adopted ICP monitoring years ago, while some have argued against the need for such an approach ¹¹⁾.

Data suggest that there is a small, yet statistically significant, survival advantage in patients who have ICP monitors and a GCS score of 3. However, all patients with ICP monitors experienced longer hospital length of stay, longer intensive care unit stay, and more ventilator days compared with those without ICP monitors. A prospective observational study would be helpful to accurately define the population for whom ICP monitoring is advantageous ¹²⁾.

EVD and IP measurements of ICP were highly correlated, although intermittent EVD ICP measurements may fail to identify ICP events when continuously draining cerebrospinal fluid. In institutions that use continuous cerebrospinal fluid diversion as a therapy, a two-monitor system may be valuable for accomplishing monitoring and therapeutic goals ¹³⁾.

In the search for a reliable, cooperation-independent, noninvasive alternative to invasive intracranial pressure monitoring in children, various approaches have been proposed, but at the present time none are capable of providing fully automated, real-time, calibration-free, continuous and accurate intracranial pressure estimates. Fanelli et al. investigated the feasibility and validity of simultaneously monitored arterial blood pressure(ABP) and middle cerebral artery (MCA) cerebral blood flow velocity (CBFV) waveforms to derive noninvasive ICP (nICP) estimates.

Invasive ICP and ABP recordings were collected from 12 pediatric and young adult patients (aged 2-25 years) undergoing such monitoring as part of routine clinical care. Additionally, simultaneous transcranial Doppler (TCD) ultrasonography-based MCA CBFV waveform measurements were performed at the bedside in dedicated data collection sessions. The ABP and MCA CBFV waveforms were analyzed in the context of a mathematical model, linking them to the cerebral vasculature’s biophysical properties and ICP. The authors developed and automated a waveform preprocessing, signal-quality evaluation, and waveform-synchronization “pipeline” in order to test and objectively validate the algorithm’s performance. To generate one nICP estimate, 60 beats of ABP and MCA CBFV waveform data were analyzed. Moving the 60-beat data window forward by one beat at a time (overlapping data windows) resulted in 39,480 ICP-to-nICP comparisons across a total of 44 data-collection sessions (studies). Moving the 60-beat data window forward by 60 beats at a time (nonoverlapping data windows) resulted in 722 paired ICP-to-nICP comparisons.

Greater than 80% of all nICP estimates fell within ± 7 mm Hg of the reference measurement. Overall performance in the nonoverlapping data window approach gave a mean error (bias) of 1.0 mm Hg, standard deviation of the error (precision) of 5.1 mm Hg, and root-mean-square error of 5.2 mm Hg. The associated mean and median absolute errors were 4.2 mm Hg and 3.3 mm Hg, respectively. These results were contingent on ensuring adequate ABP and CBFV signal quality and required accurate hydrostatic pressure correction of the measured ABP waveform in relation to the elevation of the external auditory meatus. Notably, the procedure had no failed attempts at data collection, and all patients had adequate TCD data from at least one hemisphere. Last, an analysis of using study-by-study averaged nICP estimates to detect a measured ICP > 15 mm Hg resulted in an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.83, with a sensitivity of 71% and specificity of 86% for a detection threshold of nICP = 15 mm Hg.

This nICP estimation algorithm, based on ABP and bedside TCD CBFV waveform measurements, performs in a manner comparable to invasive ICP monitoring. These findings open the possibility for rational, point-of-care treatment decisions in pediatric patients with suspected raised ICP undergoing intensive care ¹⁴⁾.

Noninvasive quantitative measures of the peripapillary retinal structure by SD-OCT were correlated with invasively measured intracranial pressure. Optical coherence tomographic parameters showed promise as surrogate, noninvasive measures of intracranial pressure, outperforming other conventional clinical measures. Spectral-domain OCT of the peripapillary region has the potential to advance current treatment paradigms for elevated intracranial pressure in children ¹⁵⁾.