Sedative medications are widely used in intensive care unit (ICU) patients. Structured assessment of sedation and agitation is useful to titrate sedative medications and to evaluate agitated behavior, yet existing sedation scales have limitations. We measured inter-rater reliability and validity of a new 10-level (+4 “combative” to −5 “unarousable”) scale, the Richmond Agitation–Sedation Scale (RASS), in two phases. In phase 1, we demonstrated excellent (r = 0.956, lower 90% confidence limit = 0.948; κ = 0.73, 95% confidence interval = 0.71, 0.75) inter-rater reliability among five investigators (two physicians, two nurses, and one pharmacist) in adult ICU patient encounters (n = 192). Robust inter-rater reliability (r = 0.922–0.983) (κ = 0.64–0.82) was demonstrated for patients from medical, surgical, cardiac surgery, coronary, and neuroscience ICUs, patients with and without mechanical ventilation, and patients with and without sedative medications. In validity testing, RASS correlated highly (r = 0.93) with a visual analog scale anchored by “combative” and “unresponsive,” including all patient subgroups (r = 0.84–0.98). In the second phase, after implementation of RASS in our medical ICU, inter-rater reliability between a nurse educator and 27 RASS-trained bedside nurses in 101 patient encounters was high (r = 0.964, lower 90% confidence limit = 0.950; κ = 0.80, 95% confidence interval = 0.69, 0.90) and very good for all subgroups (r = 0.773–0.970, κ = 0.66–0.89). Correlations between RASS and the Ramsay sedation scale (r = −0.78) and the Sedation Agitation Scale (r = 0.78) confirmed validity. Our nurses described RASS as logical, easy to administer, and readily recalled. RASS has high reliability and validity in medical and surgical, ventilated and nonventilated, and sedated and nonsedated adult ICU patients.

A blood test for traumatic brain injury (TBI) is on the horizon, and private enterprises are commercializing TBI biomarkers for US Food and Drug Administration approval. Research in the field of TBI biomarkers and concussion has skyrocketed in the last decade.^1-3 Two promising brain injury biomarkers have emerged for mild TBI, namely, glial protein glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) and neuronal protein ubiquitin C-terminal hydrolase L1 (UCH-L1). GFAP is an astroglial biomarker of injury and is found in the astroglial skeleton of both white and gray brain matter.⁴ UCH-L1 is a neuronal brain injury biomarker found in high abundance in neurons and has previously been used as a histological biomarker.⁵

Neurocritical care depends, in part, on careful patient monitoring but as yet there are little data on what processes are the most important to monitor, how these should be monitored, and whether monitoring these processes is cost-effective and impacts outcome. At the same time, bioinformatics is a rapidly emerging field in critical care but as yet there is little agreement or standardization on what information is important and how it should be displayed and analyzed. The Neurocritical Care Society in collaboration with the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine, the Society for Critical Care Medicine, and the Latin America Brain Injury Consortium organized an international, multidisciplinary consensus conference to begin to address these needs. International experts from neurosurgery, neurocritical care, neurology, critical care, neuroanesthesiology, nursing, pharmacy, and informatics were recruited on the basis of their research, publication record, and expertise. They undertook a systematic literature review to develop recommendations about specific topics on physiologic processes important to the care of patients with disorders that require neurocritical care. This review does not make recommendations about treatment, imaging, and intraoperative monitoring. A multidisciplinary jury, selected for their expertise in clinical investigation and development of practice guidelines, guided this process. The GRADE system was used to develop recommendations based on literature review, discussion, integrating the literature with the participants’ collective experience, and critical review by an impartial jury. Emphasis was placed on the principle that recommendations should be based on both data quality and on trade-offs and translation into clinical practice. Strong consideration was given to providing pragmatic guidance and recommendations for bedside neuromonitoring, even in the absence of high quality data.

UCH-L1 from adult patients with severe TBI to uninjured controls; and examined the relationship between levels with severity of injury, complications and functional outcome. Design: This study was designed as prospective case control study. Patients: This study enrolled 66 patients, 41 with severe TBI, defined by a Glasgow coma scale (GCS) score of ≤8, who underwent intraventricular intracranial pressure monitoring and 25 controls without TBI requiring CSF drainage for other medical reasons. Setting: Two hospital system level I trauma centers. Measurements and Main Results: Ventricular CSF was sampled from each patient at 6, 12, 24, 48, 72, 96, 120, 144, and 168 hrs following TBI and analyzed for UCH-L1. Injury severity was assessed by the GCS score, Marshall Classification on computed tomography and a complicated postinjury course. Mortality was assessed at 6 wks and long-term outcome was assessed using the Glasgow outcome score 6 months after injury. TBI patients had significantly elevated CSF levels of UCH-L1 at each time point after injury compared to uninjured controls. Overall mean levels of UCH-L1 in TBI patients was 44.2 ng/mL (±7.9) compared with 2.7 ng/mL (±0.7) in controls (p <.001). There were significantly higher levels of UCH-L1 in patients with a lower GCS score at 24 hrs, in those with postinjury complications, in those with 6-wk mortality, and in those with a poor 6-month dichotomized Glasgow outcome score. Conclusions: These data suggest that this novel biomarker has the potential to determine injury severity in TBI patients. Further studies are needed to validate these findings in a larger sample....