Treatments For Cerebral Edema

Inducing Hypothermia

Inducing hypothermia means a team of medical professionals is going to lower the patient's core body temperature intentionally. You can think of this like icing a sprained ankle on a much larger scale. The cold temperature is going to do a couple of things. The first is it will lower the body's metabolism or the rate at which it is burning through energy. This means overall fewer requirements for the body. The cold is also going to reduce swelling, just as it will on a sprained ankle. It causes vasoconstriction, or the narrowing of the blood vessels, to the area of injury, which lowers the inflammation response and causes a decrease in swelling.