Atlas of Electroencephalography in Coma mid Cerebral Death

American Clinical Neurophysiology Society Guideline 6: Minimum Technical Standards for EEG Recording in Suspected Cerebral Death

“…In this collaborative study, there was no instance of stimulus-related activity in EEG recordings of patients with ECI (Bennett et al, 1976;NINCDS, 1980;Walker, 1981). Any apparent EEG activity resulting from the above stimuli or any others (airway suctioning and other nursing procedures can be potent stimuli) must be carefully distinguished from noncerebral physiologic signals and from nonphysiologic artifacts.…”

“…In one study (Bennett et al, 1976), the best montage included : Fp2-C4, C4-O2, Fpl-C3, C3-Ol, T4-Cz (T8-Cz in the 10-10 system), Cz-T3 (Cz-T7 in the 10-10 system), with one-channel ECG and one-channel non-cephalic recording (e.g. on the hand).…”

“…In the situation approaching ECI, there may be potentials in the theta and delta ranges, so every effort should be made to avoid attenuation of this low frequency activity. Nevertheless, it has been demonstrated that a lowfrequency setting of 1 Hz is adequate for the determination of ECI (Jorgensen, 1974;Bennett et al, 1976). The 60-Hz notch filter can be used with care, and only after appropriate troubleshooting is performed.…”

“…A wide range of artifacts is present in the patients who sustain severe brain insults requiring special care (Tatum et al, 2011). These are illustrated in the Atlas of Electroencephalography in Coma and Cerebral Death (Bennett et al, 1976) in Current Practice of Clinical Electroencephalography (Chatrian et al, 2003. ) (Hirsch et.…”

“…In the Collaborative Study of Cerebral Death (Bennett et al, 1976;NINCDS, 1980;Walker, 1981), there were no patients who survived for more than a short period after an EEG showed ECI --provided that overdose of depressant drugs was excluded. This finding confirmed the results of the earlier survey summarized in the Introduction.…”