Intracranial Pressure Management: The Stepwise Approach

Intracranial pressure (ICP) monitoring and interventions to decrease ICP are routinely used in patients with severe traumatic brain injury (sTBI). The Brain Trauma Foundation (BTF), a non-profit organization, synthesizes available evidence on sTBI to develop recommendations for intervention, monitoring, and treatment and provides guidance on treatment protocols incorporating expert consensus and clinical judgment (Carney, Neurosurgery 80:6–15, 2017). In this chapter, we describe the pathophysiology of intracranial pressure, current methods of intracranial pressure monitoring, and targets for current therapies guided by ICP monitoring with a stepwise approach to ICP management.