Continuous monitoring of intracranial pressure for prediction of postoperative complications of hypertensive intracerebral hemorrhage.

OBJECTIVE: This study evaluates the value of continuous dynamic monitoring of intracranial pressure (ICP) in patients with hypertensive intracerebral hemorrhage to predict early postoperative complications. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Data from 80 patients treated in our hospital from February 2014 to February 2015 were analyzed. The patients all underwent decompressive craniectomies, and their ICP changes were monitored invasively and continuously for 1 to 7 days after surgery. The average blood loss during surgery for the group of patients was 65.3 ± 12.4 ml and the mean GCS score 8.7 ± 2.4. Cases were divided into three groups according to ICP values to compare early postoperative complications of the groups: a normal and mildly increased group (51 cases), a moderately increased group (19 cases) and a severely increased group (10 cases). RESULTS: To validate the analysis we first showed that comparisons among groups based on gender, age, systolic pressure, diastolic pressure, bleeding time, blood loss, operation time, craniectomy localization, and preoperative mannitol dosage yielded no statistically significant differences. In contrast, the following comparisons produced statistically significant differences: the comparison of postoperative Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) scores showing that the lower intracranial pressure, the higher the GCS score; the postoperative rehemorrhage, cerebral edema and death ratios showing the higher the intracranial pressure, the higher the rehemorrhage ratio; the average ICP and the time to occurrence of rehemorrhage, cerebral edema or cerebral infarction, showing the relationship between the average ICP and the time to a complication. Patients with higher ICP averages suffered a complication of rehemorrhage within the first 9.6 ± 2.5 hours on average. Nevertheless, the comparison of GCS scores in those patients and the others showed no significant differences. CONCLUSIONS: Based on the findings, the dynamic monitoring of intracranial pressure can early and sensitively predict postoperative complications of patients with hypertensive cerebral hemorrhage, and guide the clinical intervention actively to improve the surgery outcome.