Intensive care management of head injury

This chapter provides an overview of the early and intensive care management of traumatic brain injury (TBI), with a focus on interventions designed to optimize cerebral and systemic physiological variables in order to minimize secondary brain injury and systemic complications. Importantly, it has become increasingly apparent that intracranial and cerebral perfusion pressure monitoring alone cannot detect all instances of cerebral compromise. There has thus been a shift towards the use of multimodality neuromonitoring to provide early warning of cerebral hypoxia/ischaemia and guide timely and targeted interventions that aim to improve outcomes after TBI. Further research is required to establish the role of many of the interventions that are currently considered routine aspects of the management of TBI.