Brain Tissue Oxygen Monitoring in Severe Brain Injury, II: Implications for Critical Care Teams and Case Study

The authors describe how critical care teams integrate interventions to maintain adequate brain oxygenation as patients progress through hospitalization. Critical-care algorithms are defined and a case study is presented, allowing readers to analyze the interventions used to optimize a patient’s recovery.

Research related to the effects of certain interventions on brain tissue oxygen monitoring was presented in part I: “Research and Usefulness in Critical Care.”¹ In this article, we continue the discussion of brain tissue oxygen monitoring and its effects on patients with severe traumatic brain injury. First, we describe how the interventions of critical care teams are integrated to maintain adequate brain oxygenation as patients progress through the critical phases of hospitalization. Second, we define critical-thinking algorithms that allow the team to implement sequenced interventions to maintain patients with traumatic brain injury in the zone of control. Last, we apply that theoretical and practical information to an actual...