Typically we try to place ventricular drain to drain and measure the Intracranial pressure in severe head injury.However newer avenues have shown placing cisternal drain may have ripple effect on the outcome.Can it be a mirror to the intrabrain pressure????
Not necessarily. ICP may vary between various intracranial compartments e.g., supratentorial & infratentorial. Or, even between the two hemispheres.
I agree with Dr. Khan. Cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) pressure is varies among different compartments. In one of our patients with a rare inherited metabolic disease (MSUD), the CSF pressure was markedly elevated especially in the compartments surrounding the optic nerves. The patient was successfully treated with fenestration of the optic nerve sheets before getting blind (see publication below). This is a nice example of elevated CSF pressure restricted to certain compartments in the central nervous system.
Article Cerebral edema and intracranial hypertension in an adult wit...
I agree with the answers above with the caveat that it depends on the cistern. I suspect that in the absence of pathology, cisternal pressure equals intracranial pressure but because we generally only measure pressures when some sort of pathologic process is occurring, it may not accurately reflect ICP. With that said, I have inadvertently placed ventricular catheters into cisterns and used the pressures recorded as reflections of ICP.
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