Quantitative EEG During Critical Illness Correlates with Patterns of Long-Term Cognitive Impairment

Abstract

Objective

Many intensive care unit (ICU) survivors suffer disabling long-term cognitive impairment (LTCI) after critical illness. We compared EEG characteristics during critical illness with patients’ 1-year neuropsychological outcomes.

Methods

We performed a post hoc analysis of patients in the BRAIN-ICU study who had undergone EEG for clinical purposes during admission (n = 10). All survivors underwent formal cognitive assessments at 12-month follow-up. We evaluated EEGs by conventional visual inspection and computed 10 quantitative features. We explored associations between EEG and patterns of LTCI using Wilcoxon rank-sum tests and Spearman’s rank correlations.

Results

Of 521 Vanderbilt patients enrolled in the parent study, 24 had EEG recordings during admission. Ten survivors had EEG tracings available and completed follow-up cognitive testing. All but one inpatient EEG showed generalized background slowing. All patients demonstrated cognitive impairment in at least one domain at follow-up. The most common deficits occurred in delayed memory (DM—median index 62) and visuospatial/constructional (VC—median index 69) domains. Relative alpha power correlated with VC score (ρ = 0.78, P = .008). Peak interhemispheric coherence correlated negatively with DM (ρ = −0.81, P = .018).

Conclusions

Quantitative EEG features during critical illness correlated with domain-specific cognitive performance in our small cohort of ICU survivors. Further study in larger prospective cohorts is required to determine whether these relationships hold.

Significance

EEG may serve as a prognostic biomarker predicting patterns of long-term cognitive impairment.