Targeted Temperature Management in Spontaneous Intracerebral Hemorrhage: A Systematic Review

Background: Fever is common in neurocritical care patients and is associated with poor outcome. Targeted temperature management (TTM), i.e. therapeutic hypothermia or controlled normothermia, after acute brain injury has been studied as a neuroprotectant for several decades. In contrast to pharmacological agents with specific targets TTM affects multiple pathophysiological mechanisms and is primarily thought to attenuate secondary brain injury. Most promising results have been obtained from experimental studies on cerebral ischemia or traumatic brain injury showing beneficial effects of hypothermia on structural and functional outcome. Keywords: Brain injury, hypothermia, normothermia, perihematomal edema, spontaneous intracerebral hemorrhage, targeted temperature management, TTM.