Role of automated pupillometry in critically ill patients

Minerva Anestesiol. 2019 Sep;85(9):995-1002. doi: 10.23736/S0375-9393.19.13437-2. Epub 2019 Mar 29.

Abstract

Pupillary examination has fundamental diagnostic and prognostic values in clinical practice. However, pupillary assessment was relied until present on manual, qualitative, examination, using manual flash penlights or lamps. Quantitative examination with the use of automated infrared video-pupillometers allows an objective assessment of several pupillary parameters and may be superior to manual subjective examination. The potential for quantitative pupillometry is multiple in the setting of critical care, for the monitoring and detection of secondary cerebral insults and to assess brainstem dysfunction and early coma outcome prognostication, and in the intra-operative anesthesiology setting, to assess analgesia and opioid requirement. Here, we describe the pupillometry technique and review recent critical care and anesthesiology studies that demonstrate the value and potential clinical utility of quantitative pupillometry as neuromonitoring bedside modality.

Publication types

  • Review

MeSH terms

  • Analgesia
  • Analgesics / pharmacology
  • Anesthetics / pharmacology
  • Anthropometry / instrumentation
  • Anthropometry / methods*
  • Antiemetics / pharmacology
  • Automation
  • Clinical Trials as Topic
  • Coma / physiopathology
  • Critical Care / methods*
  • Critical Illness*
  • Equipment Design
  • Humans
  • Infrared Rays
  • Intracranial Hypertension / physiopathology
  • Multicenter Studies as Topic
  • Neuromuscular Blocking Agents / pharmacology
  • Prognosis
  • Pupil / radiation effects
  • Reflex, Abnormal
  • Reflex, Pupillary* / drug effects

Substances

  • Analgesics
  • Anesthetics
  • Antiemetics
  • Neuromuscular Blocking Agents