Significance of intracranial pressure pulse morphology in pediatric traumatc brain injury

We investigated the relationship between the intracranial pulse pressure (ICP_PP) and the mean intracranial pressure (ICP_M). In adult patients, several research groups have described a linear relationship between ICP_PP and ICP_M within the range of cerebral autoregulation. Current monitoring and therapy are mainly based on the mean ICP_M, since it is believed that the ICP_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_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_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_PP and ICP_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 < 0.001), which indicates that there exists a linear relationship between ICP_PP and ICP_M. However, we found r > 0.90 only in 16/54 segments (p=NS) . This result and visual inspection of ICP_PP vs. ICP_M density plots suggest that ICP pulse pressure is not fully explained by the ICP M.