Role of therapeutic hypothermia in improving outcome after traumatic brain injury: a systematic review.

This systematic review delineates the effect of primary therapeutic hypothermia (PTH) (initiated on presentation of the patient) on both mortality and neurological outcome in patients with traumatic brain injury. The safety profile of the therapy is also assessed. A systematic search of the following databases was performed: MEDLINE, EMBASE, Zetoc database of conference proceedings, the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, and the clinicaltrials.gov website, up to July 28, 2011. Relevant journals were hand-searched for further articles and reference lists were checked against the retrieved results for additional resources. The retrieved results were filtered for randomized controlled trials in English where systemic hypothermia was applied for ≥ 12 h in the treatment arm and outcome was assessed at a minimum of 3 months. Randomized controlled trials were assessed for quality of evidence using the GRADE system. Eighteen randomized controlled trials (1851 patients) were identified. The overall relative risk of mortality with PTH when compared with controls was 0.84 [95% confidence interval (CI)=0.72-0.98] and of poor neurological outcome was 0.81 (95% CI=0.73-0.89). However, when only high-quality trials were analysed, the relative risks were 1.28 (95% CI=0.89-1.83) and 1.07 (95% CI=0.92-1.24), respectively. Hypothermia was associated with cerebrovascular disturbances on rewarming and possibly with pneumonia in adult patients. Given the quality of the data currently available, no benefit of PTH on mortality or neurological morbidity could be identified. The therapy should therefore only be used within the confines of well-designed clinical trials.

Accurate diagnosis of hip prosthesis loosening using a vibrational technique.

OBJECTIVE: To examine the potential role of vibration testing as a non-invasive method of diagnosing loosening of total hip replacements in the clinical setting. DESIGN: Single blind cohort study in two hospitals. BACKGROUND: Diagnosing loosening of total hip replacements is heavily dependent on investigative techniques that are unreliable. Previous studies into the use of vibration testing have produced conflicting results. METHODS: Comparison of vibration testing and radiographs in patients with a total hip replacement experiencing hip pain symptomatic of loosening, with patients showing evidence of a secure prosthesis. RESULTS: Vibration testing has a sensitivity of 80% and a specificity of 89%. The positive predictive value was 92% and the negative predictive value was 73%; it was unable to produce a definitive diagnosis in 8% of patients. When compared with radiographs from the same patients, vibration testing was shown to be 20% more sensitive and able to diagnose 13% more patients. CONCLUSIONS: Vibration testing can deliver more accurate information on the stability of total hip replacements than radiographs in the clinical setting, despite being in the early stages of development. Relevance. This study shows that 70 more patients may be provided with the correct diagnosis and 46 fewer patients may be undiagnosed each year, when using vibrometry as opposed to radiographs. In view of the relative disparity between the level of development between the two techniques and the encouraging results hitherto presented, it is felt that by improving vibration testing it may supersede radiographs in the detection of prosthesis loosening.