Crucial Decisions in Severe Traumatic Brain Injury Management: Criteria for Treatment Escalation

About this Research Topic

Background

Intracranial hypertension is strongly associated with adverse outcomes in neurocritical care patients. This “compartment syndrome” of the brain, should be dealt with in a timely manner to optimize chances for recovery of the brain injured patients (especially those with traumatic brain injury, but also those with other types of severe brain injury being managed at an ICU).

We aim to assemble a collection of articles (Original Articles, Viewpoints, Reviews and Case Reports with concise clinical appraisals of a specific topic) that focus on the decisions, interventions or tests which are truly essential, and have to be applied in a timely manner, to provide the best possible management decisions for treatment escalation in patients with severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) and increased intracranial pressure (ICP).

Articles should center around treatment escalation decisions in severe TBI patients that are essential for the delivery of adequate quality-of-care. Additionally, we want to stress the inclusion of clinical insights since scientific evidence for many treatments in these cases is scarce at best. We believe the neurocritical care community may be served by assembling clinical insights from experienced clinicians into an article collection to add “sharing experiences” to the neurocritical care literature. However, to give a balanced testimony of clinical and scientific information, the clinical setting of specific medical observations should be well described.

To summarize, we seek articles that:

• Focus on management issues regarding treatment escalation in severe TBI patients with intracranial hypertension (ICH) or at high risk for ICH that can be regarded as crucial and should be handled in a timely manner

• Have a strict scientific focus or are combined with clinical practice observations and experiences that are well explained within their specific context and have a more tutorial character

• That challenge current concepts in neurocritical care and may form a basis for further research or discussions on best practice

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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