-
All right, everyone, welcome back.
-
Again, this is another episode of the
-
Insights podcast. As a reminder,
-
Insights, the content we talk about
-
here is based on the content from the
-
on-call chapters published by the
-
Neurocritical Care Society. This is a
-
continually updated online guidebook
-
that really provides just a rich wealth
-
of content created by experts. And
-
Sally and I are so excited to get to
-
distill some of that content, but we
-
really invite you to go and check out
-
the chapters as well. We are so
-
grateful to our sponsors Biogen and
-
Sarah Bell, and now a word from one of
-
our sponsors. Time is brain when it
-
comes to seizures. Sarah Bell Point of
-
Care EEG empowers the bedside team to
-
detect or rule out seizure activity in
-
minutes. To learn more, visit
-
sarahbellcom Alright, so in the
-
last episode, we sort of went through,
-
you know, what are your, how do you
-
approach a patient that you suspect
-
might have some arachnoid hemorrhage.
-
What is your sort of diagnostic
-
algorithm? What are the things that
-
you're worried about in that acute
-
management for a patient who does have a
-
very highly suspicious and urismo
-
pattern in sub-ragnoid hemorrhage? This
-
time, we're gonna spend a little bit
-
more going through some of the medical
-
management, not so much the surgical of
-
clipping versus coiling, but the
-
medical management of these patients
-
once they get to a neuro ICU. These are,
-
I think, some of the most challenging
-
and engaging and just really rewarding
-
patients to care for, just to kind of
-
like think about this in sort of a broad
-
perspective. You have sort of part one
-
of an aneurysmal subarachnoid lifespan,
-
which is just stabilization, preventing
-
re rupture, treating herniation, I
-
mean, preventing herniation and then
-
treating
-
hydrocephalus. Part two sort of starts
-
once that aneurysm is secured, the
-
hydrocephalus, if it's present, has
-
been addressed And now we're really
-
entering a phase that's going to last.
-
you know, for that initial period all
-
the way through 21 days where you think
-
about trying to diagnose, screen,
-
prevent delayed cerebral ischemia. So
-
to be clear, vasospasm and delayed
-
cerebral ischemia are not quite the same
-
thing. We often talk about vasospasm
-
and preventing vasospasm and treating
-
vasospasm, but it's really important to
-
know that vasospasm is one sort of
-
biomarker of who's at risk for delayed
-
cerebral ischemia. We know that this is
-
a very complicated, complex phenomenon
-
that involves cellular, misignally,
-
cytokine release and sort of a much more
-
complicated thing than just the blood
-
vessels narrowing.
-
However, it really is important that we
-
screen and we look for vasospasm. And
-
so one of the things that I really like
-
about the new guidelines in the on-call
-
chapter is that you get a sense for just
-
how accurate of these screening
-
techniques are. I think at many, many
-
centers, transcranial dopplers are sort
-
of the bread and butter of screening.
-
The pulled estimates for TCDs to
-
diagnose vasospasm have a pretty good
-
sensitivity of almost 90. They're not
-
quite as specific. So they're good at
-
finding vasospasm. But again,
-
vasospasm is just one biomarker of who's
-
at risk for delayed cerebral ischemia.
-
You know, this is helpful, and I think
-
we use it because it's very sensitive.
-
CTAs certainly have a higher sensitivity
-
for detection of vasospasm when symptoms
-
develop. And I think we're getting more
-
and more data about using CT perfusion
-
to kind of understand who is actually
-
having dysregulated perfusion to parts
-
of the brain that might be at risk of
-
delayed cerebral ischemia. The final
-
thing that we're using quite free or
-
some centers use quite And I think there
-
is evolving evidence for is using EEG.
-
We know that patients who have a late
-
onset epileptiform abnormalities
-
probably have some perfusion abnormality
-
going on to cause those late onset
-
epileptiform abnormalities. And it
-
seems like for those patients, there
-
does seem to be a higher correlation of
-
who goes on to develop delayed cerebral
-
ischemia
-
Now, we know that when patients develop
-
symptoms, they benefit from often
-
catheter-based therapy and angioplasty.
-
But we as neurointensivists were really
-
interested in trying to react before
-
patients develop symptoms of DCI. So,
-
yeah, I know kind of within our center,
-
we're using more and more of
-
IV no-renew Talk us through some of
-
the like things that we should watch out
-
for for those patients who get put on
-
no-renew. Yeah, for sure. I think as
-
you mentioned, Casey, we do have some
-
patients that are refractory and
-
bifractory, you know, we mean that
-
even despite being on oral nemotopean,
-
which is, you know, gold standard and
-
our usual care in these cases, they
-
still have. evidence of DCI, there is
-
some evidence on TCD or CTA or CTP or as
-
you said EEG. So these are the patients
-
that are very complicated and these are
-
the patients that we're looking for
-
different strategies pharmacologically
-
or non-pharmacologically to help them.
-
So IV known as we all kind of know in
-
critical care is an INO trope and the
-
idea behind it is that by giving this
-
agent you are going to improve and
-
increase your cardiac output and the
-
hope and the goal is that by improving
-
your cardiac output, you're going to
-
increase perfusion to the brain or
-
cerebral perfusion. Now a couple of
-
things when it comes to IV known just
-
because I feel like we don't use as much
-
as other, you know, agents, first
-
thing is that it will have or it will
-
cause a lot of hypotension. So it comes
-
with that big price and we find
-
ourselves usually at least in our
-
institution that So we have
-
IV, norepinephrine, and IV,
-
noremonone kind of running at the same
-
time. And then the other piece that is
-
really important for people to note is
-
that noremonone is rinnily cleared. So
-
it will stick around if your patient has
-
renal failure. You have to adjust it
-
for a renal impairment. So it's not as
-
clean as a lot of other invasive active
-
agents, such as norepinephrine or
-
phenylephrine or other agents.
-
Absolutely I really do like this a lot.
-
I think it - I've seen it be very
-
helpful in preventing patients from
-
needing catheter base therapy. Another
-
one of my institution's favorite drugs
-
of choice is intrathecal nichardibine.
-
So walk us through a little bit about
-
kind of what some of the studies show on
-
that and maybe kind of the evidence that
-
we have so far. We've done this from
-
time to time. I think there is a role
-
And I think, you know, where distance
-
coming from is that. when we do calcium
-
channel blockers, you know, like
-
nemotopy, which is again, really the
-
only agent that has been shown to have
-
the most benefit when it comes to
-
neurological improvement, you know,
-
from early studies that's been done. I
-
think the idea and the problem is that a
-
lot of other calcium channel blockers
-
like IV formulations will drop the blood
-
pressure so much. There's always this
-
concern that even in nemotopy, if you
-
have a concern, right, that it's gonna
-
drop your map is gonna come to that
-
price and sometimes you have to choose
-
between your augmentation of map and
-
your, you know, nemotopy and we don't
-
wanna get into that debate 'cause I know
-
everyone does it differently. But I
-
think the idea behind neikardipine
-
intrathecal or intraventricular, which
-
is some institutions do, is that you
-
get the local benefit of a calcium
-
channel blocker without the systemic
-
side effect of it It's a lower dose. it
-
is very targeted, it is easy to give.
-
Again, like we typically do the
-
intraventricular, which is you have the
-
EVD, you put it in, you kind of let it
-
sit there and then you basically drain
-
after an hour or so. Now, the evidence
-
behind this, there is to my knowledge,
-
there is no randomized control trial.
-
All that we know is observational
-
studies And based on the observational
-
studies, some of which are actually
-
published in neurocritical care, there
-
is some evidence that this could
-
possibly be useful in this population.
-
Absolutely. And I think again, the
-
guidelines really emphasize that we
-
really don't have enough data to include
-
these. And it is sort of center
-
specific and what centers are
-
comfortable doing, what they've become
-
accustomed to, how they use it in their
-
protocols that are in place. One of the
-
final thing that sort of has been
-
interesting recently is the effect of
-
lumbar drainage of the blood that's sort
-
of sitting in the basal cistern. This
-
in the guidelines, just said, there
-
may be a role for lumbar drainage to
-
prevent DCI. Right after the guidelines
-
were published, early drain was just
-
published recently. That maybe does
-
show that there is a benefit of draining
-
from below and trying to use the
-
gravitational pull to get some of that
-
cytotoxic blood out. But I think again,
-
we need more experience, we're gonna
-
need more evidence before that really
-
makes it into the guidelines So, you
-
know, these patients are in depth on a
-
lot of drugs and emotipine being sort of
-
the real evidence-based way to prevent
-
or to improve functional outcomes.
-
Magnesium, statin, salia, what's the
-
final word on this? I think, you know,
-
this could be a hot debate and we could
-
talk about it for days, but the short
-
answer is that not routinely recommended.
-
And I think that's probably honestly the
-
best answer. I mean, could you give
-
magnesium for pain? Sure, could you
-
keep someone's you know statin that are
-
already taking from home. Yes, but I
-
don't know that adding it with the
-
intention that it's going to improve DCI
-
is something that we know is, you know,
-
going to be helpful, at least as of now
-
with the evidence that we have.
-
The other thing that the guidelines
-
really shifted on and is that we're
-
pulling back on who needs a continued
-
anti-seizure medication. So what are we
-
supposed to do about the patient who's
-
not seizing in the ICU? You know, this
-
is a person who's, we've never seen
-
these, but someone said, like, oh,
-
they have a seizure and onset. What are
-
the guidelines saying about that and
-
sort of anti-seizure recommendations in
-
general, anti-seizure medication
-
recommendations? Yeah, I think
-
something that, you know, you and I
-
kind of talked about a little bit of
-
offline is that if you think that they
-
seize, but there is, you know, no
-
objective evidence that they seize, it
-
looks like the recommendation is do
-
seven days of anti-seizure medication,
-
avoid fun and towing, and that's it.
-
But I think we all agree that if you see
-
someone seizing objectively on EEG, in
-
your ICU, that's a different story.
-
You hook them, you know. to EEG,
-
you're gonna keep your anti-seizure
-
medication and close monitoring and then
-
future plans with the neurology or
-
neurosurgery team as far as how many
-
more days are they gonna get discharged?
-
Are they not gonna get discharged? But
-
I think if there is suspicious that they
-
see these but not proven, you could do
-
seven days of anti-seizure medication
-
and kind of
-
prevent all the confusion about, okay,
-
like maybe even this seizure or
-
something like that. But if we're
-
actively seizing, I think that's a
-
separate kind of discussion. Absolutely
-
agree. I think we're gonna keep
-
treating the patients that are seizing
-
with their anti-seizure medications. I
-
love it. Avoiding finitoad because of
-
that drug, drug interaction with the
-
mode of pain that we talked about last
-
time and the fact that we know that this
-
leads to poorer outcomes. But all of
-
these patients, you know, when I round
-
with students in the neuro ICU, I
-
frequently hear, why is everyone
-
febrile? And why does everyone have
-
this low sodium? So what are we doing
-
about all of these hyponatremic patients?
-
And what do the new guidelines have to
-
say about that? Yeah, so I think as a
-
pharmacist, the first thing that I
-
think about are there any medications
-
that can do that? You know, that's why
-
we typically don't allow any thizides
-
for these patients or anything that
-
could drop sodium that we can identify.
-
I think, you know, just like anything,
-
the question, the first question that
-
comes up when we round is that why are
-
they hyponatremic, right? Is this
-
cerebral salt wasting, which I feel
-
like in the majority of the cases, it's
-
probably the likely diagnosis in these
-
patients, or is this, you know, SIDH,
-
or is it something else? Obviously, if
-
you know what's happening, then it's
-
easier. If it's, let's say, cerebral
-
salt wasting, I think there is a lot of
-
discussion about what about photocortic
-
zone. And the guidelines, actually, I
-
was really impressed that they said you
-
could do photocortic zone. It will fix
-
your number, it will fix your sodium,
-
but guess what? It won't change your
-
DCI outcomes And I think that was
-
important to note. But the key point
-
really is that if someone's hyponatremic
-
and they're symptomatic because they're
-
hyponatremic, I think we all agree that
-
regardless of the ideology, you have to
-
give them the hypertonic saline to get
-
them to the goal that you have. So
-
although, you know, working up why
-
they're hyponatremic and let's say if
-
they're SIDH, obviously, I think that
-
becomes a little bit more tricky because
-
food restriction in this population is a
-
tough discussion to have We want to,
-
you know, have them bubolemic because
-
we know that's evidence-based to improve
-
outcomes. So if you have to kind of
-
have that discussion and see what
-
direction we're going to go. But if
-
it's cerebral salt wasting, I think
-
food of cortisone is an option. You can
-
still give them, you know, fluids and
-
salts, meaning, you know, normal
-
saline if they're very low, hypotonic
-
saline, if they're very symptomatic,
-
again, if they're
-
permeating, obviously more concentrated
-
sodium, like 234 I think knowing why
-
their hyponatremate is important to fix
-
that, but just like any neurological
-
emergency, if they're actively
-
symptomatic, then hypertonic saline is
-
a very fair and reasonable a choice here.
-
I feel like we could spend literally
-
like the next four days talking about
-
the guidelines, how fascinating these
-
patients are, but I think this has been
-
kind of a nice discussion for if you're,
-
you know, rounding for the first time
-
in the neuro ICU and you're seeing all
-
of these complex management strategies
-
play out. I mean, this is a place
-
where there is still a lot of equipos
-
about how do we best manage and prevent
-
DCI, and all of this sort of neurologic
-
complications and the systemic critical
-
care illness that can go along with
-
these very sick and complicated patients.
-
I feel like this is what makes neuro ICU
-
so fun. I agree. And I think, you
-
know, when these guidelines came out,
-
there's some, you know, discussion
-
about, oh, like, it doesn't say do
-
this and this and that. There's a lot
-
of discussions about, well, we don't
-
know, there is no evidence. But as you
-
said, I think that's the fun part the
-
beauty of this that you kind of do your
-
own assessment. You read the literature
-
and you can make that clinical judgment
-
by looking at a patient as opposed to
-
kind of following a recipe for every
-
single patient. Totally agree. All
-
right. Well, I think that brings us to
-
the end of this episode. It has been so
-
much fun. It's all you any parting
-
words? I think we covered it all. We
-
covered two different guidelines and
-
hopefully people can learn something new
-
or add comments if they wanted something
-
more or different that we didn't talk
-
about We definitely invite people to
-
look at the on-call chapter, which has
-
even more than we could possibly ever go
-
into in these short episodes. All right.
-
Well, thanks guys. It's been fun.
-
Thank you. Bye.