Monitoring of Cerebral Blood Flow and Metabolism in Intensive Care

An update of the methods currently used to monitor and measure cerebral blood flow and cerebral oxygenation, particularly in the critically ill. The techniques discussed include laser-doppler spectroscopy, thermodiffusion and near infrared spectroscopy.

---

Until recently, the determination of cerebral blood flow was limited to intermittent measurements and particularly difficult to perform in critically ill patients. The monitoring of cerebral blood flow was an unreachable goal. This book gives an update of the methods now available to measure and monitor cerebral blood flow and cerebral oxygenation. It discusses various techniques to measure cerebral blood flow discontinuously, such as the Kety-Schmidt technique, 133-Xenon-CBF and CTCBF with stable synon. Various methods to continuously estimate cerebral blood flow are then described, such as thermodiffusion techniques, monitoring of tissue pO2, dopplersonography, laser-doppler-spectropscopy, near infrared spectroscopy and monitoring of oxygen saturation in the jugular bulb.