Abstract
Background
Somatosensory evoked potentials (SSEPs) help prognostication, particularly in patients with diffuse brain injury. However, use of SSEP is limited in critical care. We propose a novel, low-cost approach allowing acquisition of screening SSEP using widely available intensive care unit (ICU) equipment, specifically a peripheral “train-of-four” stimulator and standard electroencephalograph.
Methods
The median nerve was stimulated using a train-of-four stimulator, and a standard 21-channel electroencephalograph was recorded to generate the screening SSEP. Generation of the SSEP was supported by visual inspection, univariate event-related potentials statistics, and a multivariate support vector machine (SVM) decoding algorithm. This approach was validated in 15 healthy volunteers and validated against standard SSEPs in 10 ICU patients. The ability of this approach to predict poor neurological outcome, defined as death, vegetative state, or severe disability at 6 months, was tested in an additional set of 39 ICU patients.
Results
In each of the healthy volunteers, both the univariate and the SVM methods reliably detected SSEP responses. In patients, when compared against the standard SSEP method, the univariate event-related potentials method matched in nine of ten patients (sensitivity = 94%, specificity = 100%), and the SVM had 100% sensitivity and specificity when compared with the standard method. For the 49 ICU patients, we performed both the univariate and the SVM methods: a bilateral absence of short latency responses (n = 8) predicted poor neurological outcome with 0% FPR (sensitivity = 21%, specificity = 100%).
Conclusions
Somatosensory evoked potentials can reliably be recorded using the proposed approach. Given the very good but slightly lower sensitivity of absent SSEPs in the proposed screening approach, confirmation of absent SSEP responses using standard SSEP recordings is advised.
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All authors conceived of and contributed to the design of the project, the interpretation of results, and the critical revision of the article. AS and BR performed data analyses and were responsible for primary drafting of the manuscript. The final manuscript was approved by all authors.
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The study was approved for both patients and healthy volunteers by the local institutional review board (Consciousness Recovery Project with Outcomes IRB-AAAR3191 approval [12/07/2017]). Procedures were followed in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation (institutional or regional) and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975. Written informed consent was obtained from patient surrogates and from the healthy volunteers, respectively; all patients who recovered consciousness were given the opportunity to withdraw from the study.
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This project was directly supported by a grant from the DANA foundation in aide of Dr Claassen. Additionally, Dr. Claassen reports funding from the NIH (R01 NS106014 and R03 NS112760) and the McDonnel Foundation. Dr. Rohaut received postdoctoral grants from Amicale des Anciens Internes des Hôpitaux de Paris and Syndicat des Chefs de Cliniques et Assistants des Hôpitaux de Paris, Assistance Publique–Hôpitaux de Paris, and the Philippe Foundation. This work was funded by ‘‘Institut National de la Sante´ et de la Recherche Médicale’’ and ‘‘Poste d’Accueil Inserm program’’ (Aude Sangare).
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Sangare, A., Rohaut, B., Borden, A. et al. A Novel Approach to Screen for Somatosensory Evoked Potentials in Critical Care. Neurocrit Care 40, 237–250 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12028-023-01710-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12028-023-01710-8