AUTHOR=Rostami Elham , Nilsson Pelle , Enblad Per 

TITLE=Cerebral Blood Flow Measurement in Healthy Children and Children Suffering Severe Traumatic Brain Injury—What Do We Know?

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Neurology

VOLUME=Volume 11 - 2020

YEAR=2020

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/neurology/articles/10.3389/fneur.2020.00274

DOI=10.3389/fneur.2020.00274

ISSN=1664-2295

ABSTRACT=Traumatic brain injury is the leading cause of death in children. Children with severe TBI are in need of neurointensive care where goal is to prevent secondary brain injury by avoiding secondary insults. Monitoring of cerebral blood flow (CBF) and pressure autoregulation in the injured brain is crucial. However, there are limited studies performed in children to investigate this. Current studies report on age dependent increase in CBF with narrow age range. Low initial CBF following TBI has been correlated to poor outcome and may be more prevalent than hyperemia as previously suggested.  Impaired pressure autoregulation is also detected and correlated with poor outcome but it remains to be elucidated if there is a causal relationship. Current studies are few and mainly based on small number of patients between the age of 0-18 years. Considering the changes of CBF and pressure autoregulation with increasing age, larger studies with more narrow age ranges and multimodality monitoring are required in order to generate data that can optimize the therapy and clinical management of children suffering TBI.