Non-infectious hyperthermia in acute brain injury patients: relationships to mortality, blood pressure, intracranial pressure and cerebral perfusion pressure.

The present study was conducted to investigate the frequency of hyperthermia during the first 72 h after acute brain injury, and to compare subjects that developed hyperthermia with those that did not with respect to blood pressure, intracranial pressure (ICP), cerebral perfusion pressure (CPP), Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) score and mortality. This study was conducted by performing a retrospective medical record review of 126 brain injury patients admitted to the neurological intensive care unit of a university hospital located in Incheon, South Korea. Our results showed that 25.4% of the subjects had hyperthermia for at least 1 day during the first 3 days of hospitalization. Hyperthermic subjects demonstrated higher mortality and ICP, and lower CPP and GCS scores than non-hyperthermic subjects, indicating a reduced cerebral blood flow. The findings may provide a possible explanation for poor clinical outcome and offer justification for the careful monitoring of body temperature in patients with acute brain injury.