Manucher Javid, Urea, and the Rise of Osmotic Therapy for Intracranial PressureKeywords: intracranial pressure, osmotic, traumatic brain injury, head injury, medicationInteractive Manuscript
Ask Questions of this Manuscript:
What is the background behind your study?
Therapy with hypertonic solutions is one of the mainstays of neurosurgical treatment for all types of neurological injury. While the initial research with hypertonic agents in the early decades of the 20th Century showed great promise in the ability of these agents to lower intracranial pressure, this research also showed a considerable rate of adverse effects and complications. By the 1940s and 50s, hypertonic therapy had been discounted as unsafe and was rarely used in neurosurgery. In the late 1950s, Manucher J. Javid and Paul Settlage at the University of Wisconsin began experimenting with infusions of urea as an agent to control intracranial pressure.
What is the purpose of your study?
Their experiments were wildly successful, and osmotic therapy became a treatment of major importance to neurosurgeons worldwide in only a few years.
Describe your patient group.
This question was not answered by the author
Describe what you did.
A review of the materials in the University of Wisconsin Archives was performed, along with a review of the published medical literature, and a personal interview with Dr. Javid.
Describe your main findings.
This manuscript chronicles the work of Javid and Settlage, including a discussion of the early research on hypertonic agents, the initial difficulty the Wisconsin researchers had in disseminating their results, the widespread acceptance that followed, and the impact that these discoveries had on the neurosurgical community.
Describe the main limitation of this study.
This is a retrospective review.
Describe your main conclusion.
The prominent place that hypertonic agents now hold in the armamentarium of neurosurgeons is owed to the work of Dr. Javid, as illustrated in this historical analysis.
Describe the importance of your findings and how they can be used by others.
This question was not answered by the author
Therapy with hypertonic solutions is one of the mainstays of neurosurgical treatment for all types of neurological injury. While the initial research with hypertonic agents in the early decades of the 20th Century showed great promise in the ability of these agents to lower intracranial pressure, this research also showed a considerable rate of adverse effects and complications. By the 1940s and 50s, hypertonic therapy had been discounted as unsafe and was rarely used in neurosurgery. In the late 1950s, Manucher J. Javid and Paul Settlage at the University of Wisconsin began experimenting with infusions of urea as an agent to control intracranial pressure.
Their experiments were wildly successful, and osmotic therapy became a treatment of major importance to neurosurgeons worldwide in only a few years.
A review of the materials in the University of Wisconsin Archives was performed, along with a review of the published medical literature, and a personal interview with Dr. Javid.
This manuscript chronicles the work of Javid and Settlage, including a discussion of the early research on hypertonic agents, the initial difficulty the Wisconsin researchers had in disseminating their results, the widespread acceptance that followed, and the impact that these discoveries had on the neurosurgical community.
This is a retrospective review.
The prominent place that hypertonic agents now hold in the armamentarium of neurosurgeons is owed to the work of Dr. Javid, as illustrated in this historical analysis.
Project Roles:
