The linear relationship between transcranial Doppler pulsatility indices and intracranial pressure is influenced by traumatic brain injury and vasospasm.
The pulsatility index (PI) and the intracranial -pressure (ICP) may or may not be correlated; the evidence to date differs widely. A study of multiple measures of PI and the corresponding ICP in patients with severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) showed that some of the relationships were moderately strong when calculated as conventional Pearson correlation coefficients. However, that method makes no adjustment of any kind for statistical outliers in the data. With the TBI patients demonstrating a large fraction of skewed measurements, a set of robust correlations were calculated that demonstrated that the apparent relationships between PI and ICP were entirely attributable to the statistical outliers. We conclude that the fundamental relationship of PI to ICP is weakly positive at best.
Department of Neurosurgery, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA. tglenn@mednet.ucla.edu
Thomas C
TC
Glenn
Arun K
AK
Sherma
David L
DL
McArthur
Xiao
X
Hu
Christopher R
CR
Hanuscin
Mehjabeen S
MS
Furreedan
David A
DA
Hovda
Paul M
PM
Vespa
Neil A
NA
Martin
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001783:Blood Flow Velocity; D001930:Brain Injuries / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000601:surgery; D002560:Cerebrovascular Circulation; D005260:Female; D015600:Glasgow Coma Scale; D006801:Humans; D007427:Intracranial Pressure / Q000502:physiology*; D016014:Linear Models; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009493:Neurosurgery; D012737:Sex Factors; D017585:Ultrasonography, Doppler, Transcranial; D020301:Vasospasm, Intracranial / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000601:surgery; D055815:Young Adult