Subarachnoid Hemorrhage

Background: While the intensive care of patients with life-threatening brain illnesses has advanced tremendously, a large number of therapies are still without proper scientific support. This can be partly explained by the fact that mechanisms of initial brain injury are still not well understood. Why additional neurological injury occurs during a patient's stay in the NeuroCritical Care Unit (NCCU) despite current best, evidence-based clinical practices, is also not well understood. However, over the past decade, better tools have become available to measure and monitor the impact of our clinical care on the rapidly changing physiology and chemistry of the injured brain. Some of these tools are CT, MRI, ultrasound, and catheter-based technology measuring blood flow and metabolism. These tools have enabled earlier detection of injury and complications and newer therapeutic strategies. Purpose: Examine disease pathways common to all brain injuries seen in the University of Maryland's 22-bed NCCU. Life-threatening neurological illnesses cared for in the NCCU include massive stroke, bleeding in and around the brain (subarachnoid hemorrhage, intracerebral hemorrhage, subdural hemorrhage, intraventricular hemorrhage), brain tumors, difficult to control seizures, neurologic infections, nerve and muscle diseases (such as myasthenia gravis or Guillain-Barre Syndrome), and spinal cord disorders among others. Many NCCU patients are comatose or paralyzed and may suffer injuries in other parts of the body as well. This effort will require the creation of a robust clinical database for the capture of data including patient characteristics (age, sex), clinical characteristics, medical treatments, surgical interventions, physiological data (such as vital signs, cerebral blood flow, intracranial pressure, cerebral oximetry, etc), laboratory data, and standard-of-care diagnostic studies such as electroencephalography (EEG), ultrasound, CT, MRI, and angiograms. Similar databases exist at other major centers for neurocritical care and have been instrumental to the identification of characteristics both predictive of and associated with outcomes of patients long after their stay in the NCCU. In addition, the samples collected will be included in the University of Maryland Medicine (UMM) Biorepository which is a shared resource to enable biomedical research by University of Maryland faculty.

External ventricular drainage is frequently used in neurocritical care, particularly in patients admitted for non-traumatic subarachnoid hemorrhage who develop hydrocephalus and/or intracranial hypertension. While external ventricular drainage is often initially lifesaving, its prolonged maintenance is associated with complications, especially infections and prolonged hospital length of stay. There is currently no consensus on the optimal weaning strategy. Two approaches are used in routine practice: direct clamping (the external ventricular drain is closed as soon as weanability criteria are met) and gradual weaning (the external ventricular drain level is progressively raised before final clamping). No randomized controlled trial has yet demonstrated the superiority of one strategy over the other in patients with non-traumatic subarachnoid hemorrhage. The investigators hypothesize that a direct clamping strategy, combined with daily screening of standardized weanability criteria, will reduce the duration of external ventricular drain maintenance compared with the conventional gradual weaning strategy. SEVDVE-2 is a multicenter, randomized, controlled, parallel-group, single-blind superiority trial that will compare these two weaning strategies in 170 adult patients admitted to critical care for non-traumatic subarachnoid hemorrhage with a first external ventricular drain inserted within the previous 3 days. Patients will be randomized 1:1, stratified on the presence of an intraventricular hematoma. The primary outcome is the number of external ventricular drain-free days alive at Day 28.

The study purpose is to investigate the hypothesis that in adults with SAH, early neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES) and high protein supplementation (HPRO) will improve muscle mass, metabolic and inflammatory biomarker profiles, compared to SAH controls receiving standard of care interventions for nutrition and mobilization. The investigators will accomplish this by studying the effects of a high protein (HPRO) nutritional treatment as well as NMES intervention have upon muscle wasting and motor strength acutely after SAH. This will be addressed in a prospective trial of SAH patients receiving HRPO with NMES as compared to age and severity-matched SAH patients undergoing standard of care interventions for nutrition and mobilization. Additionally, the study will investigate the impact HPRO and NMES interventions have upon inflammatory cytokines and markers of energy balance. Results of this study will establish evidence for precision nutrition plus early exercise to mitigate the catabolic and inflammatory state produced by SAH to improve muscle, metabolic, and health recovery outcomes.

Patients with subarachnoid hemorrhage are prone to suffer from dysnatriemia. Evidence shows that hyponatriemia is associated with increased incidence of vasospasm, brain swelling and mortality in these patients. Patients with subarachnoid hemorrhage often require large amounts of iv fluids in order to maintain euvolemia and support cardiocirculatory function. Prior evidence shows that the type of infusion fluid significantly influences blood sodium content. Hence, this study evaluated whether the sodium content of the infusion solution impacts mortality and morbidity in patients with subarachnoid hemorrhage.

The purpose of this study is to determine the effectiveness of prophylactic administration of intra-thecal nicardipine though lumbar cerebrospinal fluid drain in prevention of symptomatic vasospasm in patients with subarachnoid hemorrhage due to rupture of cerebral aneurysms.

The evaluation of neurosurgical outcomes varies from center to center, and the predictive factors that determine these outcomes are not fully known or shared. This study aims to assess outcomes and their predictors using measures agreed upon by the participating centers. Standardizing the evaluation of outcomes and predictors improves the quality of research, allows for data comparison, and facilitates a "common language" in routine clinical practice. Most importantly, it influences therapeutic decisions in various neurosurgical conditions. Clinically, the identified predictors can also be used during preoperative assessments to provide more precise guidance to patients undergoing surgery.

The goal of this observational study is to test the association between baseline ventilatory parameters (in particular mechanical power (MP), mechanical power normalized to predicted body weight (MP/PBW) and driving pressure (DP) with the baseline neurological status (assessed through the Glasgow coma score) in adults patients under mechanical ventilation with acute neurological injury secondary to stroke, brain trauma or subarachnoid hemorrhage. The main question\[s\]it aims to answer are: 1. In patients with acute neurological injury under mechanical ventilation, is there a correlation between the acute neurological injury, assessed using the Glasgow scale on admission, and baseline ventilatory parameters? 2. In patients with acute neurological injury under mechanical ventilation, are the baseline ventilatory parameters altered at baseline?

The principal objective of this study is to compare the incidence of ventriculostomy related infections (VRIs) in patients who receive twenty-four hours of antibiotics, beginning no more than sixty minutes prior to EVD placement, to the incidence of VRIs in patients who also receive a pre-procedural dose of antibiotics with continued dosing of antibiotics for the duration of the external ventricular drain (EVD). At this time, the duration of prophylactic antibiotic use with antibiotic impregnated EVDs is unknown.

This study will evaluate whether non-invasive auricular vagal nerve stimulation lowers inflammatory markers, and improves outcomes following spontaneous subarachnoid hemorrhage.

Surges in the sympathetic nervous system occur at the ictus of a variety of neurological critical illnesses including intracranial hemorrhage and ischemic stroke. It is hypothesized that these exaggerated increases in sympathetic nervous activity produce maladaptations that promote secondary brain injury. One of these possible mechanisms include diffuse vasospasm that cause cerebral ischemia. Hence, methods to abrogate the sympathetic nervous system in this context are under active investigation. One possible method is the regional anesthesia technique of the stellate ganglion nerve block, which is ordinarily used for complex regional pain syndrome, but has been shown to reduce cerebral sympathetic activity and reduces vasospasm in patients with subarachnoid hemorrhage. However, its effect on the microcirculation is not clear. Hence, we propose to study patients receiving the stellate ganglion nerve block as part of their standard medical care and to image their retinal microcirculation before and after the procedure using Optical Coherence Tomography Angiography (OCTA).

The overall goal of the DISCOVERY study is to better understand what factors contribute to changes in cognitive (i.e., thinking and memory) abilities in patients who experienced a stroke. The purpose of the study is to help doctors identify patients at risk for dementia (decline in memory, thinking and other mental abilities that significantly affects daily functioning) after their stroke so that future treatments may be developed to improve outcomes in stroke patients. For this study, a "stroke" is defined as either (1) an acute ischemic stroke (AIS, or blood clot in the brain), (2) an intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH, or bleeding in the brain), (3) or an aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage (aSAH, or bleeding around the brain caused by an abnormal bulge in a blood vessel that bursts). The investigators hypothesize that: 1. The size, type and location of the stroke play an important role in recovery of thinking and memory abilities after stroke, and pre-existing indicators of brain health further determine the extent of this recovery. 2. Specific stroke events occurring in individuals with underlying genetic or biological risk factors can cause further declines in brain heath, leading to changes in thinking and memory abilities after stroke. 3. Studying thinking and memory alongside brain imaging and blood samples in patients who have had a stroke allows for earlier identification of declining brain health and development of individualized treatment plans to improve patient outcomes in the future.

The Stroke Recovery Initiative is a nation-wide participant recruitment registry that connects people who have had a stroke with researchers who are working to develop new approaches to improve recovery after stroke.

The new Integra CereLink ICP monitor integrate the possibility of recording and displaying continuously the AUC (Pressure Time Dose, PTD) and other ICP derived variables and provide the possibility of evaluating the utility of this information at the bedside. It offers the opportunity to test in a standardized way the clinical value of the PTD computation in this setting. Therefore, this study aims to test clinically if PTD recorded continuously is associated to patients' outcome and to identify a threshold of PTD associated with the transition from good to negative outcomes.

This study aims to develop and validate a prognostic model for neurocritical patients using multimodal brain monitoring data. By combining data from various monitoring techniques such as EEG, TCD, and NIRS, this model will help predict 90-day outcomes (awake, comatose, or deceased) and support personalized treatment decisions. The study is observational and involves no experimental interventions.

Several recent large-scale clinical trials aimed at improving subarachnoid hemorrhage(SAH) outcomes have concluded with negative results, failing to enhance the prognosis for these patients. Consequently, there is an urgent demand for novel treatment strategies and approaches to address the challenges posed by SAH. Remote ischemic conditioning(RIC) has gained considerable attention in the treatment of stroke, particularly ischemic stroke, with numerous studies demonstrating its potential to enhance neurological outcomes compared to conventional treatments alone.RIC for the treatment of SAH is an investigative strategy in its initial stages. The neuroprotective effects of RIC, particularly its potential to preserve cranial nerve function and ameliorate neurological deficits, confer significant value in the treatment of SAH patients. The precise manner in which SAH patients may benefit from RIC treatment, and the mechanisms by which it improves neurological function, remain to be fully understood. Consequently, randomized controlled trials are necessary to validate the efficacy of RIC in this patient population and to delineate the optimal therapeutic protocols for its application. Based on the above discussion, this study aims to explore the efficacy and safety of RIC in the treatment of SAH.

The objective of the study is to assess brain tissue perfusion by contrast-enhanced ultrasound perfusion imaging (PerCEUS) in acute brain injuries. More precisely, it aims : * to evaluate the heterogeneity of brain perfusion and thus diagnose brain tissue hypoperfusion with contrast-enhanced ultrasound. * to correlate contrast-enhanced ultrasound with perfusion measurements by usual multimodal monitoring.

The purpose of this study is to examine the safety and feasibility of using hyperpolarized metabolic MRI to study early brain metabolism changes in subjects presenting with head injury and suspected non-penetrating traumatic brain injury (TBI). This study will also compare HP pyruvate MRI-derived metrics in TBI patients with healthy subjects as well as Subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) patients to better understand if metabolic Magnetic resonance imaging scan (MRI) can improve our ability to diagnose a TBI. The FDA is allowing the use of hyperpolarized \[1-13C\] pyruvate (HP 13C-pyruvate) in this study. Up to 15 patients (5 with TBI, 5 with SAH, and 5 healthy volunteers) may take part in this study at the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB).

The goal of this clinical trial is to evaluate efficacy and safety of evacuation of cerebrospinal fluid, blood, and harmful bacteria from the intraventricular, subdural and subarachnoid spaces by Active Controlled Irrigation and Drainage (IRRAflow) compared to Passive External Ventricular Drainage (EVD). Subjects with intraventricular hemorrhage, subarachnoid hemorrhage, subdural bleeding, and ventriculitis will be randomized to receive the IRRAflow device or EVD device and followed for one month post-procedure to compare outcomes between the subject groups.

An MRI study to examine the relationship between blood pressure and cerebral blood flow in patients with subarachnoidal hemorrhage and suspect or verified vasospasm.

Vasospasm is a common complication after rupture of intracranial aneurysms causing devastating neurologic deficits and death. Vasospasm has been directly associated with the amount of subarachnoid blood inside the basal cisterns. Prior literature has attempted to refine treatment of ruptured intracranial aneurysms but does not have clear guidelines on the optimal method to drain subarachnoid blood. Two methods, extraventricular drain (EVD) and lumbar drain (LD) have been compared retrospectively yet remain controversial as to which method is optimal in reducing subarachnoid blood and preventing vasospasm. This study would be a prospective randomized trial in which patients would be assigned to EVD or LD and observed to see if one method of intervention is associated with preventing clinical vasospasm, decreasing subarachnoid blood, shortening overall ICU stay, and reducing the need for a permanent ventriculoperitoneal shunt. The conclusions of this study may identify an optimal treatment modality to benefit all future patients with ruptured intracranial aneurysms.

Aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) is a devastating form of stroke, with three major complications : early brain injury (EBI), vasospasm and delayed cerebral ischemia (DCI). Those patients are often given care in neurocritical care. Imaging is particularly useful to diagnose these complications. Brain imaging includes CT scan, MRI and arteriography which are not easily available and need an intrahospital transportation. Furthermore, intrahospital transportation of critically ill patients is associated with significant complications Here, investigators try to show that a new non-invasive bedside device, based on 3D enhanced ultrasonography, is able to detect principal arteries of anterior circulation of the brain.

The pathophysiological mechanisms of aneurysmal subarachnoid haemorrhage (aSAH) involve early brain injury (EBI) and delayed cerebral ischemia (DCI). Several mechanisms contribute to EBI pathogenesis, including cell death, inflammatory response, oxidative stress, excitotoxicity, microcirculatory dysfunction, microthrombosis and cortical spreading depolarization. All are suggested to be linked due to common pathogenic pathways and direct interaction. Despite advances in research of diagnostics and treatment strategies, brain injury remains the major cause of death and disability in SAH patients. There is no sufficient treatment of SAH and its devastating consequences known so far. Developing and improving diagnostic methods to monitor SAH patients and to evaluate efficacy of treatment strategies are essential in SAH research. These include neuroimaging, biomarkers, and other parameters such as invasive multimodal neuromonitoring and intraoperative electrophysiological monitoring. Cerebral vasospasm (CV) - mostly responsible for DCI - can be depicted on angiograms. Altogether, tremendous efforts have been taken to conquer the occurrence and sustainability of CV. The mortality of patients suffering aSAH rises up to 50% if the patients' condition is critical (Hunt\&Hess (HH) Grade 5, WFNS Grade 5, modified Fisher Grade 4). Reports of beneficial outcome in patients with pre-existing CSF shunting have been published. The hypothesis of early CSF reapplication to the bloodstream, in order to prevent CV seems to be positively approved by the mentioned reports. Nevertheless, no data could be found on the mechanisms of action in this phenomenon. To confirm the presence of interaction of the mechanisms of EBI and evaluate the application of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), a pilot clinical trial was planned. Due to the lack of validated animal models for aSAH it is necessary to perform the trial first-in-human. A pilot (proof of concept) trial - is done through inclusion of 10 patients with severe aSAH (≥HH4). According to clinical guidelines, these patients receive external ventricular drainages in order to drain CSF and lower intracranial pressure. An interim analysis of data will be performed after inclusion and treatment of 5 patients. Blood-/CSF-sampling for further analysis will be collected before, during and after treatment according to the study protocol.

Aim: Investigate whether patients undergoing specialist rehabilitation after complex neurological injury show different functional outcomes if music therapy is included in their rehabilitation program compared to usual care. Background: Patients with complex needs following a brain, spinal cord, and/or peripheral nerve injury often require a period of specialist neurorehabilitation. This involves multiple therapy disciplines, led by a Consultant in Rehabilitation Medicine, Neurology, or Neuropsychiatry. Although music therapy is suggested to enhance neuroplasticity and recovery in patients with brain injury, it is not routinely commissioned in clinical care due to a lack of supportive evidence. Hypothesis: Patients undergoing music therapy in addition to complex specialist rehabilitation show better functional outcomes compared to usual care. Number of participants: 75, aged 16-80 years. Methods: Patients undergo baseline assessments and are randomised to MUSIC or CONTROL Therapy. Both arms receive 1-3 additional therapy sessions per week, matched for duration and number, total 15 hours. After approximately 10-weeks intervention, assessments are repeated. All participants then have access to music therapy until they are discharged from Neurorehabilitation Unit (NRU), with additional qualitative data collection using semi-structured interviews, field notes, staff reports, staff stress surveys, and broader ecological observations. Duration for Participants: From consent to discharge from NRU. Primary Outcome: Change in Functional Independence Measure+Functional Assessment Measure (FIM+FAM), Northwick Park Dependency Scale (NWPDS), and Barthel Activities of Daily Living pre and post 15 hours intervention. Secondary Outcome: Change in quality of life (Flourishing Scale), psychological distress (Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, Depression Intensity Scale Circles), social interaction (Sickness Impact Profile Social Interaction Subscale), well-being (WHO Well-Being Index), and communication (Communication Outcomes After Stroke Scale), pre and post 15 hours intervention. Mean difference in well-being (WHO Well-Being Index) throughout the intervention period between music therapy and control therapy groups. Mean difference in post-intervention pain and mood visual analogue scores between music therapy and control therapy groups.

A researcher-initiated and conducted multicenter, randomized controlled trial aimed at evaluating the efficacy and safety of ultra-early statin therapy in the treatment of acute aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage (aSAH).

This study is intended to evaluate the feasibility of using VisAR augmented reality surgical navigation during placement of an external ventricular drain (EVD). The investigators are interested in confirming the design of the VisAR headset is compatible with this bedside procedure.