Research to improve the monitoring of patient temperature perioperatively has led to the realization that a patient’s core temperature does not match brain temperature and that monitoring brain temperature could help protect against hypothermic or hyperthermic brain damage and dysfunction, especially during surgery.
The development of a noninvasive probe placed on the medial portion of the eyelid allows the continuous monitoring of brain temperature viathe ipsilateral brain thermal tunnel (BTT) between the cavernous sinus and body surface. In presentations at previous ASA annual meetings, it has been shown that BTT monitoring is sensitive to increased brain temperature during states of cerebral excitation, such as pain, as well as to decreased brain temperature after a stroke or during hypothermic cardiopulmonary bypass. In an abstract1 presented at ANESTHESIOLOGY® 2017, the authors reported increases in BTT temperature during anger and mental effort, and decreases when study subjects are exposed to relaxing...
