Temperature variability in the day-night cycle is associated with further intracranial pressure during therapeutic hypothermia

To assess whether circadian patterns of temperature correlate with further values of intracranial pressure (ICP) in severe brain injury treated with hypothermia. We retrospectively analyzed temperature values in subarachnoid hemorrhage patients treated with hypothermia by endovascular cooling. The circadian patterns of temperature were correlated with the mean ICP across the following day (ICP ). We analyzed data from 17 days of monitoring of three subarachnoid hemorrhage patients that underwent aneurysm coiling, sedation and hypothermia due to refractory intracranial hypertension and/or cerebral vasospasm. ICP ranged from 11.5 ± 3.1 to 24.2 ± 6.2 mmHg. The ratio between the coefficient of variation of temperature during the nocturnal period (18:00-6:00) and the preceding diurnal period (6:00-18:00) [temperature variability (TV)] ranged from 0.274 to 1.97. Regression analysis showed that TV correlated with ICP (Pearson correlation = -0.861, adjusted R square = 0.725, p