Change in estimated cerebral perfusion pressure after treatment with nimodipine or magnesium sulfate in patients with preeclampsia.

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Magnesium Sulfate and Nimodipine, published as a randomized controlled trial.

Little is known of the cerebral perfusion pressure effects of magnesium sulfate or nimodipine.

Their objective in this study was to compare the change in cerebral perfusion pressure in patients with severe preeclampsia randomly selected to receive nimodipine or magnesium sulfate.

Who Took Part

The age groups tagged for this paper are adults, women only.

Measurements were obtained before treatment (baseline) and 30 minutes after the magnesium sulfate bolus was completely infused or 30 minutes after the nimodipine was ingested.

The person performing the ultrasonography was unaware of the patient's group assignment.

How the Study Was Run

The researchers set it up as a randomized study.

Because people in this Magnesium Sulfate study were split into groups at random, differences between the groups are less likely to reflect who happened to join each one.

Transcranial Doppler ultrasonography was used to measure flow velocities in the right and left middle cerebral arteries, and the results were averaged.

Studies were performed before any other intervention.

Estimated cerebral perfusion pressure was calculated with the following formula: Estimated cerebral perfusion pressure = Velocity(mean) x [(Blood pressure(mean ) - Blood pressure(diastolic ))/(Velocity(mean) - Velocity(diastolic ))].

The difference between estimated cerebral perfusion pressure at baseline and after treatment was compared between the 2 groups by means of the Mann-Whitney rank sum test.

What Was Measured

PubMed files the paper under topics including Blood Flow Velocity, Blood Pressure, Calcium Channel Blockers, Cerebral Arteries, Magnesium Sulfate, Nimodipine and Pre-Eclampsia.

What This Means in Plain Language

The paper is a randomized study of Magnesium Sulfate and Nimodipine.

The abstract goes on to report its results in about 5 sentences; this page does not restate them, so read the paper for the findings and their limits.

The publication is from 1999 (American journal of obstetrics and gynecology), a journal based in United States.

More context: all human trials.