Central Nervous System Monitoring in Anesthesia and Intensive Care

Researchers in the fields of neurophysiology, anaesthesia and intensive care discuss the current state of noninvasive central nervous system (CNS) monitoring in this handbook. Topics covered include surgical perspectives, Doppler sonography and the multimodal long-term monitoring of brain function.

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This text is based on papers presented at a recent meeting on central nervous system monitoring. Experts in the fields of neurophysiology, experimental and clinical anaesthesia, and intensive care discussed the state-of-the-art in noninvasive CNS monitoring. Starting with the principles of CNS monitoring in humans, the topics covered include pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic interactions, the usefulness of spontaneous and evoked brain electrical activity as an overall control for afferent systems and for the assessment of anaelgesic drug treatment, perioperative anaesthesiological monitoring, and intraoperative awareness. Evaluated are such recently developed specific EEG and EP indices as spectral edge frequency, median frequency, and auditory and somatosensory evoked responses. Bispectral EEG analysis represents the future trend. Items also covered are the surgical and anaesthetic perspectives, transcranial motor EP monitoring, the assessment of jugular bulb venous oxygen saturation and transcranial Doppler sonography to interpret brain function, and the multimodal long-term monitoring of brain function. The application of an expert system supporting the diagnosis of brain death is also included.