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Does the brain become heavier or lighter after trauma?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 February 2008

T. Lescot ,
V. Degos  and
L. Puybasset
T. Lescot
Affiliation:
Groupe hospitalier Pitié-Salpêtrière, Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris and Université Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris 6), Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care, Paris, France
V. Degos
Affiliation:
Groupe hospitalier Pitié-Salpêtrière, Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris and Université Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris 6), Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care, Paris, France
L. Puybasset*
Affiliation:
Groupe hospitalier Pitié-Salpêtrière, Assistance Publique-Hôpitaux de Paris and Université Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris 6), Department of Anesthesiology and Critical Care, Paris, France
*
Correspondance to: Louis Puybasset, Département d’Anesthésie-Réanimation, Groupe Hospitalier Pitié-Salpêtrière, 47, Boulevard de l’Hôpital, 75013 Paris, France. E-mail: louis.puybasset@psl.aphp.fr; Tel: +33 1 42 16 33 71; Fax: +33 1 42 16 33 70
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Summary

An uncontrolled rise in intracranial pressure is probably the most common cause of death in traumatic brain-injured patients. The intracranial pressure rise is often due to cerebral oedema. Diffusion-weighted imaging has been extensively used to study cerebral oedema formation after trauma in experimental studies. Nevertheless, this technology is difficult to perform at the acute phase, especially in unstable head trauma patients. For these reasons, a safe examination allowing us to better understand the pathophysiology of cerebral oedema formation in such patients would be of great interest. Radiological attenuation is linearly correlated with estimated specific gravity in human tissue. This property gives the opportunity to measure in vivo the volume, weight and specific gravity of any tissue by computed tomography. We recently developed a software package (BrainView) for Windows workstations, providing semi-automatic tools for brain analysis from DICOM images obtained from cerebral computed tomography. In this review, we will discuss the results of the in vivo analysis of brain weight, volume and specific gravity and consider the use of this software as a new technology to improve our knowledge of cerebral oedema formation after trauma and to evaluate the severity of traumatic brain-injured patients.

Keywords

BRAIN INJURYTRAUMABLOOD–BRAIN BARRIERBRAIN OEDEMA
Type
Original Article
Information
European Journal of Anaesthesiology , Volume 25 , Issue S42 , February 2008 , pp. 110 - 114
Copyright
Copyright © European Society of Anaesthesiology 2008

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