Neurotrauma and Neurocritical Care: Building Generalizable Clinical and Nursing Evidence for Timely, Standardized Interventions

Severe neurologic injuries—including traumatic brain injury, intracerebral and subarachnoid hemorrhage, malignant ischemic stroke requiring ICU care, and acute spinal cord injury—remain major causes of death and disability. Despite guideline-driven advances, implementation is inconsistent; robust multicenter evidence from diverse and resource-limited settings is scarce; and one-size-fits-all protocols overlook heterogeneity and dynamic secondary insults. Emerging multimodal monitoring, advanced neuroimaging, and blood-based biomarkers, coupled with AI-enabled trajectory analytics, promise individualized targets and earlier detection of deterioration. Yet uncertainty persists around actionable thresholds, treatment-responsive phenotypes, and how to translate efficacy into real-world effectiveness. More robust clinical and nursing evidence is urgently needed to translate monitoring-derived targets into timely, standardized interventions that measurably improve survival, neurological function, and quality of life in this large, high-risk population.

Recent progress in neurotrauma and neurologic critical care—including advances in bedside monitoring, neuroimaging, and structured ICU pathways—has improved how we monitor patients and deliver bedside care. Still, many patients do not receive timely or consistent treatment, and generalizable evidence across hospitals remains limited. The goal of this Research Topic is to improve everyday care for patients with severe neurologic injuries—including, but not limited to, traumatic brain injury (TBI), intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH), subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH), chronic subdural hematoma (cSDH), malignant ischemic stroke requiring ICU care, and acute spinal cord injury—by turning what we measure into clear actions. Leveraging recent advances, we seek studies that prospectively test practical targets and novel care pathways, evaluate implementation alongside safety and feasibility, and show effects on outcomes that matter to patients, such as survival, neurological function, delirium, quality of life, and long-term cognition. We welcome work from both clinical and nursing teams and from hospitals with varied resources, with the shared aim of building stronger evidence that can be used widely and quickly.

This Research Topic welcomes submissions on, but is not limited to, the following scopes:

Acute Neurological Trauma and Surgical Emergencies: studies addressing TBI, SAH, ICH, and spinal cord injury along the early triage-to-surgery pathway.

Medical Critical Illness in the Neuro-ICU: work on ICU stroke, seizures, acute liver failure or metabolic encephalopathy, and post-cardiac-arrest hypoxic–ischemic brain injury.

Monitoring, Technology, and Interventions: research on how bedside monitoring and neuroimaging guide timely actions and improve outcomes, for example, EEG, ICP, AI, LIPUS, tDCS, bedside CT/MRI.

Critical Care Management and Nursing: practical protocols for sedation, ventilation, hemodynamics, delirium prevention, early mobilization, and family support, with nursing-led bundles.

Systems, Outcomes, and Ethics: analyses of unit models and regional networks, long-term functional and cognitive outcomes, cost and equity, transparent end-of-life decisions, and Neuro-ICU policy and health law.

Chronic Subdural Hematoma: studies of progression and recurrence risk, comparative treatments including surgery and embolization, antithrombotic management.

Keywords: neurotrauma, neurocritical care, traumatic brain injury, neurocritical nursing, clinical practice, intracerebral hemorrhage, subarachnoid hemorrhage, chronic subdural hematoma, multimodal monitoring

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.