Abstract

BACKGROUND: Traumatic brain injuries are common and costly to hospital systems. Most of the guidelines on management of traumatic brain injuries are taken from the Brain Trauma Foundation Guidelines. This is a review of the current literature discussing the evolving practice of traumatic brain injury. DATA SOURCES: A literature search using multiple databases was performed for articles published through September 2012 with concentration on meta-analyses, systematic reviews, and randomized controlled trials. RESULTS: The focus of care should be to minimize secondary brain injury by surgically decompressing certain hematomas, maintain systolic blood pressure above 90 mmHg, oxygen saturations above 93%, euthermia, intracranial pressures below 20 mmHg, and cerebral perfusion pressure between 60–80 mmHg. CONCLUSION: Much is still unknown about the management of traumatic brain injury. The current practice guidelines have not yet been sufficiently validated, however equipoise is a major issue when conducting randomized control trials among patients with traumatic brain injury.

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