An MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) technique would make it possible to measure at six months a date of discharge from the patient. coma, according to results of a study published in the medical journal Lancet Neurology.
Researchers from the Pitié Salpêtrière Hospital (Assistance publique – Hôpitaux de Paris) in France conducted their study with 200 adult patients in a coma for more than seven days after a cardiac arrest.
The researchers used a technique ofMRI(magnetic resonance imaging) to measure the movement of water in the brain’s white matter, which enables the connection between neurons.
A six-month exit prediction
The analysis of this movement, its organization and its disorganization made it possible to establish prediction thresholds for exit from the coma after six months.
“Above a certain threshold, we are sure that it will be fine; below, it is certain that it will not go. In the gray area, we have to wait,” said Professor Louis Puybasset, of the Pitié Salpêtrière hospital (Public Assistance – Hospitals of Paris), which led the study.
“It is an anatomical measurement, which does not fluctuate,” he recalls. Term interest: “have a very high level of evidence” to be able to take the decision to stop or continue treatment, depending on what can be predicted of the patient’s future “.
As the study was only conducted with comas after cardiac arrest, further testing should be done after a head trauma and an aneurysm rupture.
“Comas after cardiac arrest are” simple “because we all react the same way. In cases of head trauma, the gray area is larger” because they are all different “, explained Professor Puybasset.
“This technique is superior to all other tests used to date”, concluded the researcher, but these results now require “to be confirmed by large-scale trials”.
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