Temperature Monitoring With Zero Heat Flux Technology in Comparison With Thermocouple Needle Probe During Selective Hypothermia

Hypothermia (brain temperature < 35°C) shows great promise to minimize neural damage in patients with cardiopulmonary arrest and traumatic head injuries.[1, 2] However, cooling the whole body below 33–34°C can induce severe complications.[3] Arrhythmia, infection and primary coagulopathy are the most commonly noted complications.[3] We have developed a Selective Brain Cooling (SBC) approach which can be initiated early after injury, induces rapid cooling and maintains the target brain temperature over an extended period of time before slowly rewarming without significantly affecting the core body temperature.[4] In our experiments, brain temperature was measured invasively by inserting a thermocouple probe into the brain parenchyma, which measured brain temperature accurately but is invasive, making it unsuitable for most patients. Invasive intracranial probe also can have complications such as intracranial hemorrhage or hematoma and infection.[5] Accordingly, the clinical adaptation of our SBC technique requires a reliable, non-invasive and accurate method for measuring local brain temperature so that cooling and rewarming rate can be controlled during targeted temperature management.