Main description:

Patients in the neurointensive care unit pose many clinical challenges for the attending physician. Even experienced clinicians occasionally arrive at the point where diagnostic, work-up, treatment, or prognostic thinking becomes stymied. In daily practice, neurocritical care pertains to managing deteriorating patients, treatment of complications but also end-of-life care assisting families with difficult decisions. Part of the "What Do I Do Now?" series,
Neurocritical Care provides insight into interventions in acute neurologic disorders. Using a case-based approach, this volume emphasizes how to handle comparatively common clinical problems emergently. New to this edition are cases on monitoring and prognostication. All cases have been carefully revised, and
new information, references, and practical tables have been added. Neurocritical Care is both an engaging collection of thought-provoking cases and a self-assessment tool that tests the reader's ability to answer the question, "What do I do now?"

Contents:

Section I: Acute Interventions

1. Rapid Progression in Lobar Cerebral Hemorrhage
2. Cerebral Hemorrhage and High INR
3. Traumatic Brain Injury Arriving in the Emergency Department
4. Meningitis Not Improving After IV Antibiotics
5. Acute Encephalitis and Abnormal MRI
6. A Psychotic Break and Seizures
7. Acutely Progressive Dyspnea and Limb Weakness
8. Swollen Lips After IV Thrombolysis
9. When to Retrieve a Clot in Acute Stroke
10. Swollen Ischemic Brain and When to Call the Neurosurgeon
11. Cerebral Venous Thrombosis Not Responding to Anticoagulation
12. The First Week After Aneurysmal Subarachnoid Hemorrhage
13. The Neurointerventionalist and Aneurysmal Subarachnoid Hemorrhage
14. A Worrisome MRI Of The Spine and Prior Cancer
15. Acute Paraplegia After Aortic Surgery
16. When Status Epilepticus Becomes Treatment Refractory
17. Medical Options in Brain Metastasis
18. Hemorrhage Into a Pituitary Tumor
19. Brain Edema and Hypertensive Urgency
20. Rare Toxicity After Chemotherapy
21. Failure To Awaken After Surgery
22. Awake and Then Not Awake After Uncomplicated Brain Surgery

Section II: Monitoring 101
23. When a Spot EEG is Not Enough
24. When an Intracranial Pressure Monitor is Helpful

Section III: Calls, Pages, and Other Alarms
25. Wild and Agitated After Acute Abdomen
26. Rigidity After Experimenting with Drugs
27. Sweating, Fever and Hypertension after Traumatic Brain Injury
28. Acute Fever and Profound Shock After Ruptured Cerebral Aneurysm
29. Coma and Chest X-Ray White-Out After a Fracture
30. When Blood Pressure Needs Control After Stroke
31. A Common Cardiac Arrhythmia After Stroke
32. Hypertension And Bradycardia in Severe Guillain Barre Syndrome
33. Myasthenia Gravis Improved but Not Off the Ventilator
34. Decreasing Serum Sodium in Aneurysmal Subarachnoid Hemorrhage
35. Increasing Serum Sodium After Surgery for Tumor in The Pituitary Region

Section IV: Longterm Support, End Of Life Care, and Palliation
36. Care of a Persistently Comatose Teenager
37. Withdrawal of Care in an Elderly Person with Catastrophic Brain Injury
38. Not Yet Brain Dead
39. When to Mention Organ Donation

Section V: Principles of Prognostication

40. What Neurologists Know About Outcome in Traumatic Brain Injury
41. What Neurologists Know About Outcome in Post Resuscitation Coma