Brain tissue pO2and outcome after severe head injury

Although the use of on-line monitoring of brain ti-pO2 is increasing, so far the critical level of 10 mmHg is derived from animal experiments and clinical analyses: no hard proof on outcome basis has been given until now. The authors present an outcome analysis of 35 patients with severe head injury. Inclusion criteria were: start of ti-pO2 monitoring or = 50 mmHg were seen more often in the bad outcome group; this occurred mainly after 48-72 h post-injury. The authors concluded that brain ti-pO2 monitoring is able to detect the occurrence of early hypoxic insults. Brain ti-pO2 monitoring is an important parameter in the multimodality monitoring system.