Electrophysiologic monitoring in head injury.

Electrophysiologic monitoring of head-injured patients, using electroencephalogram (EEG) and sensory-evoked potentials, can provide a functional assessment of the neural structures involved in tested pathways. Experience using EEG, somatosensory-evoked potentials, brainstem auditory-evoked potentials, visual-evoked potentials, and the combination of sensory-evoked potentials termed multimodality-evoked potentials as clinical tools to augment patient evaluation and predict outcome demonstrates that these methods can be effectively integrated into clinical care. They can be used to augment the neurologic examination and provide useful information when other measures of neural function are limited by deep coma or by other treatment modalities that confound the clinical examination.