Closing Comments

Abstract

To judge from the increasing numbers attending successive ICP symposia interest in the topic is steadily growing, especially among clinicians. An there is no reluctance to write about experience in this field -almost three times as many papers were submitted for this meeting as could be accepted. Nonetheless there was a sense of disappointment among some of the more experienced participants that few innovative ideas should have emerged, and that so many papers were still reviewing the use, or value, or role of ICP monitoring in a variety of different conditions or circumstances. Certainly the stage has now been reached when further reports of this kind will be justified only if based on large series of well-defined categories of patients — and if the criteria for entry to the study and the objectives of measurement are clearly stated. It is naive to look to the monitoring of ICP as a means of improving patient care in a heterogeneous group of patients. Such monitoring will help patients only if a clear plan of therapeutic action is based on the results of such measurements. Even then care must be taken to exclude (or to allow for) possible vicarious influences of the institution of ICP monitoring in certain patients and not in others.