Pediatric Neurocritical Care

Children in the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) often have conditions affecting the brain. Some have direct brain illness or injury, such as trauma, brain malformations, brain tumors, seizures, or strokes. Others might have brain-related complications from other diseases. It's also clear that simply being in the ICU can affect the way children think, feel, learn, and communicate, even long after they leave the hospital.

To address this, Lucile Packard Children's Hospital Stanford has developed one of the nation's few comprehensive neurocritical care programs for children in the PICU. The program emphasizes protecting young brains, by bringing together many specialties with highly trained experts in:

Neurology
Neurosurgery
Critical Care
Stroke Care
Trauma Surgery
Neuroradiology and Interventional Neuroradiology
Neuroanesthesia
Neuro-Oncology

Each year, the medical team at LPCH cares for nearly 700 children annually with neurocritical care needs, performing more than 150 EEGs, 300 brain images, and 350 surgical interventions to focus on the health of growing brains in the intensive care unit.

Our goal is to safeguard the minds of all children who stay in the PICU and to pioneer new approaches in protecting the brain after critical illness or major surgery.