Critical illness has consequences for the nervous system. Patients experiencing critical illness are at risk for common global neurologic disturbances, such as delirium, long-term cognitive dysfunction, ICU-acquired weakness, sleep disturbances, recurrent seizures, and coma. In addition, complications related to specifi c organ dysfunction may be anticipated. Cardiovascular disease presents the possibility for CNS injury after cardiac arrest, sequelae of endocarditis, aberrancies of blood fl ow

more »

... autoregulation, and malperfusion. Respiratory disease is known to cause short-term effects of hypoxia and long-term effects after ARDS. Sepsis encephalopathy and sickness behavior syndrome are early signs of infection in patients. In addition, commonly encountered organ dysfunction including uremia, hepatic failure, endocrine, and metabolic disturbances present with neurologic fi ndings which may manifest in the critically ill patient as well. Keywords Delirium • Cognitive dysfunction • Coma • Posterior reversible encephalopathy syndrome • PRES • ICUacquired weakness • ICU-AW • Critical illness polyneuropathy • Critical illness myopathy • Critical illness polyneuromyopathy • CIPNM • Sleep deprivation • Cerebral autoregulation • Hypertensive crisis • ARDS • Hepatic encephalopathy • Uremia • Dialysis disequilibrium syndrome • Septic encephalopathy • Sickness behavior syndrome