The Effect of Electroencephalography Abnormalities on Cerebral Autoregulation in Sedated Ventilated Children

Abstract

Purpose: To determine the effects of non-ictal electroencephalogram (EEG) changes on cerebrovascular autoregulation (AR) using the cerebral oximetry index (COx). Materials and Methods: Mean arterial blood pressure (MAP), cerebral tissue oxygenation (CrSO2), and EEG were acquired for 96 h. From all of the EEG recordings, 30 min recording segments were extracted using the endotracheal suction events as the guide. EEG recordings were classified as EEG normal and EEG abnormal groups. Each 30 min segment was further divided into six 5 min epochs. Continuous recordings of MAP and CrSO2 by near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) were extracted. The COx value was defined as the concordance (R) value of the Pearson correlation between MAP and CrSO2 in a 5 min epoch. Then, an Independent-Samples Mann-Whitney U test was used to analyze the number of epochs within the 30 min segments above various R cutoff values (0.2, 0.3, and 0.4) in normal and abnormal EEG groups. A p-value p > 0.05). The median concordance values for CSrO2 and MAP in EEG normal and EEG abnormal groups were similar (0.26 (0.17–0.35) and 0.18 (0.12–0.31); p = 0.09). Conclusions: Abnormal EEG patterns without ictal changes do not affect cerebrovascular autoregulation in sedated and mechanically ventilated children.

Keywords

• cerebrovascular autoregulation
• cerebral oximetry index
• EEG changes
• sedatives
• critically ill
• children