The available literature suggests that the reason for this lack of success may be that these combination therapies have not addressed the evolution of TBI pathophysiology over time. In recent years, the scientific understanding of pathophysiology driving secondary injury after TBI has grown immensely [
2,
3,
12,
26]. It is now well established that the mechanisms underlying key drivers of secondary injury, such as inflammation and oxidative stress, are not static but undergo change over time [
8,
25,
94]. With this understanding it may be possible to predict what cellular and molecular mechanisms are most likely contributing to secondary injury at a particular stage of injury, however it is known that patients show a high degree of variability in their pathophysiologic response following TBI [
95]. Therefore, combined treatments must be based on not only a detailed understanding of “typical” secondary injury evolution but also refined and fine-tuned in accordance with the patient’s individual development of secondary injury to best treat TBI. It is possible that a multimodal treatment paradigm may address the evolving pathophysiology of secondary injury through judicious application of pharmacologic and/or nonpharmacologic interventions that are informed by multimodal imaging and neuromonitoring. By addressing not only the multifactorial causes of secondary injury, but also how they change as the disease progresses, multimodal treatment may have the potential to succeed where combination therapies failed.
4.1. Current State of Multimodal TBI Treatment
While it is increasingly appreciated that clinical TBI is a heterogeneous group of disease processes rather than a single disease, the temporal evolution of TBI-induced secondary injury has been less well investigated in the setting of TBI treatment [
7], which may contribute to the current gap in outcomes between preclinical and clinical studies. The primary drivers of TBI-associated secondary injury can be broadly divided into the categories of neuroinflammation, oxidative stress and excitotoxicity, although many other mechanisms including mitochondrial failure and cerebral edema may also play a role. Each of these is not a static disease state, but rather an evolving disease process. For example, in the hyperacute state, neuroinflammation in TBI is driven by DAMP-induced activation of local brain tissue microglia, leading to secretion of pro-inflammatory cytokines within hours of the injury occurring [
37]. However, in the acute period within days of the injury infiltration of peripheral immune cells contributes more to neuroinflammation, and at the 3-4 week time point pro-inflammatory M1 microglial activation becomes a prominent driver of the inflammatory process [
38]. Given this it is possible that, for example, an intervention targeting polarization of microglia from the M1 to the anti-inflammatory M2 phenotype may be largely ineffective if given in the acute phase but may show benefit in the early chronic phase of secondary injury.
Additionally, treatment for secondary injury after TBI is most commonly directed at stopping or preventing secondary insults such as hypotension or cerebral edema that can occur in the absence of careful management [
9,
12,
96]. Treatment approaches focusing on the underlying physiological changes of secondary injury such as excitotoxicity and neuroinflammation are less commonly reported [
97,
98]. It is thus important to not conflate secondary insults with the pathophysiology of secondary injury in comparing treatment paradigms.
Many pharmacologic interventions have been trialed to prevent or reduce secondary injury resulting from TBI. In preclinical models, an extensive number of medications have been tested to prevent secondary injury, and nearly all tested combinations have demonstrated some degree of improvement in neurobehavioral outcomes and lesion volume after experimental TBI (
Table 3). However, none have been clinically successful to date as a monotherapy or combination therapy [
5,
6]. A multimodal treatment approach taking into account the evolving pathophysiology of TBI may be the key for clinically successful treatments of secondary injury. While there are some promising preclinical trials testing a similar method [
19], there have been no clinical trials to date investigating this multimodal treatment strategy. While there are many potential options for targeted multimodal treatments, one option for pre-screening medications likely to be effective is to trial medications that showed promise in preclinical and early clinical (phase I-II) trials but did not show a benefit in phase III clinical trials. These medications have an established safety profile and proven mechanism, and it is possible that some of them may have had potential to be effective but were not applied in a multimodal manner, at the optimal time point based on the evolution of TBI pathophysiology and the patients’ physiologic state.
While the pathophysiologic mechanisms driving secondary injury have been better characterized in recent years, much of the research uncovering these mechanisms has been performed in male animal models or male patients [
99]. For example, in the preclinical trials examined within this paper only three out of fifty-four studies (6%) included female animals, and the average percentage of female subjects within analyzed clinical studies was 24%. The pathophysiologic mechanisms underlying primary and secondary injury following TBI are likely more similar than different males and females, however some differences are known to exist between males and females in TBI. In preclinical models of TBI, female animals have demonstrated decreased neuroinflammation including reductions in reactive microglia and infiltrating peripheral immune cells [
100,
101], decreased BBB disruption [
102], and decreased oxidative stress [
103]. While the mechanistic differences in TBI pathophysiology are complex and still under investigation, the effect of female sex steroids including estrogen and progesterone has been suggested as a key underlying driver for these observed differences [
104]. In animal models, female sex hormones including estrogen and progesterone have shown efficacy as part of monomodal and combined therapies [
55,
105,
106]. However, clinical trials of estrogen and progesterone as therapies for TBI have not been widely successful, which has been suggested to result from failure to account for physiologic differences in sex hormones due to age and biologic sex at the point of treatment [
104]. The discrepancy between preclinical studies, in which female animals typically experience better outcomes, and clinical trials in which females typically experience worse outcomes [
99] additionally highlights the need for better understanding of sex differences in TBI pathophysiology and the need to consider sex hormonal levels as an important physiologic parameter that could help guide multimodal treatment.
4.2. Future Directions in Multimodal TBI Treatment
While the prevention of secondary injury following TBI remains a challenge for clinicians, there are several promising avenues for multimodal TBI interventions that are undergoing active research.
As the temporal evolution of TBI-induced secondary injury has become increasingly well understood, so too has grown understanding of the spatial differences in TBI pathophysiology and how this may guide treatment decisions. In TBI there exist regions of contused brain tissue injured by direct trauma, surrounded by areas of peri-contusional tissue that experience ischemia and metabolic disruption resulting from secondary injury [
107,
108]. These regions experience differing degrees of secondary injury, with oxidative stress and mitochondrial dysfunction shown to be more severe in contused brain tissue than the peri-contusional region [
109]. While the contused areas experience severe metabolic and mitochondrial dysfunction that can culminate in unregulated cellular necrosis, the peri-contusional tissue typically maintains sufficient mitochondrial and metabolic function to initiate transcription of protective genes regulating cellular repair processes [
97]. This is a critical distinction, as therapeutics that rely on specific cellular pathways may be viable in the peri-contusional tissue but less so in the contused tissue which lacks the resources to maintain normal cellular processes. For example, glucocorticoids have the potential to reduce edema and inflammation following TBI, but act through activation of transcription factors that induce various downstream effector proteins [
110]. In a large randomized clinical trial, administration of glucocorticoids was associated with an increased risk of death compared to placebo, which may result from this mechanistic failure and increased demand on already stressed cells [
111]. A better understanding of the relative distribution of contused and peri-contused tissue in an individual patient may offer insights into the efficacy of a particular treatment or combination of interventions, however this approach has not yet been tested in clinical studies.
Non-pharmacologic interventions offer some promise in the multimodal treatment of secondary injury after TBI, for several reasons. Many non-pharmacologic interventions such as neuromodulation and nutraceuticals can be initiated without disrupting ongoing treatment and have a favorable risk/benefit profile [
57,
58], which makes it easier to apply them alongside other therapies to address TBI as it evolves. However, much like for pharmacologic interventions, the blind application of non-pharmacologic treatment techniques without a detailed understanding of the patient’s physiologic state at the time of application as well as knowledge of the molecular targets of the intervention is likely to fail. As an example, TMS has been shown in ischemic brain tissue to work in part through induction of anti-oxidative enzymes [
63] and inhibition of NF-kB [
62], suggesting that TMS may be most effective if applied as part of a multimodal treatment regimen in the acute phase of TBI. Just as multimodal imaging and neuromonitoring have shown potential to guide pharmacologic therapies for TBI, they have also helped inform non-pharmacologic treatments. Several groups have used MMM parameters including ICP, CPP, TCD and P
btO
2 to guide the use of therapeutic hypothermia in patients with severe TBI [
112,
113]. Additionally, applying a combination of pharmacologic and non-pharmacologic interventions is a possible means to address the pathophysiology of TBI and TBI-associated secondary damage, as non-pharmacologic interventions can target similar mechanisms of secondary injury through different targets in a multimodal approach to TBI treatment. For example, a hypothetical combination of mild therapeutic hypothermia and a free radical scavenger would target oxidative stress through decreasing ROS/RNS and upregulating anti-oxidative enzymes, potentially impacting oxidative stress at the hyperacute and early acute time periods [
14,
114]. While non-pharmacologic interventions are an appealing avenue for treatment of TBI, the mechanisms that underlie these interventions are not always well characterized. When the cellular and molecular targets of non-pharmacologic interventions for TBI are better understood, they may be a powerful tool for multimodal treatment of TBI.
Harnessing endogenous mechanisms with an inherent capability to activate multiple cellular pathways may allow for the targeting of TBI-induced secondary injury at distinct time points, which serves as the foundation for investigation of endogenous mechanisms as part of a multimodal treatment paradigm. Implemented in this fashion, it is possible that endogenous mechanisms may mimic the effects seen with administration of multiple pharmacologic treatments, potentially without the associated logistical challenges. Conditioning is a widely applied therapeutic technique in which a potentially harmful stimuli is applied below the threshold for tissue damage, leading to the induction of endogenous neuroprotective pathways [
115]. Remote ischemic post-conditioning is a conditioning mechanism widely studied in ischemic stroke and found to be safe and effective in both preclinical and clinical studies [
116,
117], and has demonstrated promising results in TBI [
118,
119]. While the mechanistic effects underlying ischemic post-conditioning are still being uncovered, it is known to increase expression of BDNF and promote neurogenesis and neuroplasticity, which may help to prevent neurodegeneration and maladaptive functional alterations following cerebral insults [
115]. Ischemic post-conditioning may thus be most effective if applied in the subacute and early chronic phases, to promote neuronal repair and functional recovery following TBI. The beneficial effects of conditioning-activated endogenous pathways parallel the investigation of therapeutic hypothermia for TBI, developed out of the observation that hibernating animals display resistance against TBI [
120,
121]. While preclinical trials have shown promise for therapeutic hypothermia, the available clinical literature does not demonstrate a mortality benefit from therapeutic hypothermia in adults [
122,
123]. However, this may act to reiterate the point that, with a disease as complex as TBI, it is necessary to apply a treatment at exactly the right point in disease progression, thus necessitating the implementation of therapeutic hypothermia as part of a multimodal treatment plan including multimodal imaging and monitoring based assessment of individual physiology. In fact, recent work has investigated the optimal timing of therapeutic hypothermia in preclinical studies [
124], and a clinical trial has used CMD to guide therapeutic hypothermia with a resulting reduction in mortality [
125] demonstrating the feasibility of such an approach. Though not yet assessed in TBI, the diving reflex is yet another endogenous mechanism that may be harnessed. Triggered when trigeminal sensory afferents are activated, such as by cold water during diving, a constellation of mechanisms, most notably driving blood away from the periphery and towards the brain, are produced [
126]. Far from only increasing the flow of blood to the brain, activation of the diving reflex initiates the development of an anti-oxidative phenotype, both reducing the level of systemic ROS [
127] and increasing antioxidant enzyme activity levels [
128,
129]. A systemic anti-inflammatory state is seen with chronic activation of the diving reflex [
130,
131], which may be due to the effects of the diving reflex being mediated in part through the vagus nerve, well known for its modulation of the inflammatory complex [
132,
133]. If applied judiciously, as part of a multimodal treatment strategy, the diving reflex thus could be used to target both the acute and subacute stages in oxidative stress development. Given these factors, it is possible that the diving reflex may be able to target multiple points in the timeline of TBI’s pathogenic progression and represents a promising avenue for future research. The ability of endogenous mechanisms to modulate cellular pathways is attractive in the treatment of TBI.
4.3. Imaging- & Neuromonitoring-Guided Treatment
Multimodal imaging represents a wide array of imaging techniques that are able to integrate structural and functional information in TBI, correlating regions of abnormal anatomy with disruptions in CNS function [
134]. This is particularly important for mild TBI (mTBI) in which objective diagnosis and initiation of treatment is sometimes only possible with multimodal imaging techniques [
135,
136,
137]. In moderate and severe TBI multimodal imaging historically plays a greater role in prognostication and determining the need and approprateness of aggressive interventions [
138,
139]. Multimodal MRI has been studied in clinical trials, predominantly in mTBI in the subacute or chronic phase, as it is available in most academic medical centers and does not expose the patient to ionizing radation [
137,
140] MRI sequences including diffusion weighted imaging (DWI) can be used to image cerebral edema following TBI, even in the first few days following injury [
141,
142], which could guide the early administration of therapies to reduce edema [
12]. Other advanced MRI sequences such as functional MRI (fMRI) and magnetic resonance specroscopy (MRS) may have a role in guiding treatment decisions after TBI. fMRI measures changes in blood oxygen levels associated with neuronal activation to track brain activity in real time [
143], and can localize foci of post-TBI epilepsy even in the absence of visible structural lesions [
144] which may allow for early initiation of antiepileptic medications in high risk patients in conjunction with other clinical data [
145]. MRS is a non-invasive means of characterizing cerebral metabolites at the molecular level [
146], and has been used to assess neuroinflammation in preclinical models of TBI [
147,
148]. It has been proposed that a noninvasive means to detect neuroinflammation including MRS and novel PET radiotracers specific to activated glial cells could be used to guide optimal timing of anti-inflammatory therapies in TBI [
149]. In this way, multimodal imaging techniques may be able to evaluate aspects of TBI-induced secondary injury at the micro-scale and fine-tune treatment. For example, a novel PET radiotracer specific to M2-activated microglia has been developed and tested in preclinical models [
150], which has the potential to refine treatments promoting anti-inflammatory effects of M2 microglia. However, multimodal MRI techniques have not yet been shown to have utility in timing treatments of TBI. Furthermore, multimodal MRI has been best studied in mTBI outside of the acute phase of injury [
137], while the physiologic insights possible with multimodal MRI would likely be most useful in the acute phase of moderate and severe TBI. Multimodal imaging including MRI is difficult to perform in this population due to the practical difficulties of transporting a critically ill patient out of the intensive care unit for long imaging procedures, or placing an intubated and mechanically ventillated patient into the MRI scanner [
151]. This critical patient population is thus generally unable to benefit from multimodal MRI, and prognostication is typically done using non-multimodal imaging such as CT scans [
152,
153].
Several groups have trialed methods to reduce the limitations associated with multimodal imaging as an adjunct to the treatment of TBI. Portable imaging devices have been developed that can be brought to the patient’s bedside, removing the logistical challenges and risk associated with transferring a critically ill or injured patient [
154]. Portable low-field multimodal MRI has shown potential to refine treatment in the neurocritical care setting [
155], however the resulting images are significantly lower in quality as compared to a traditional MRI which limits clinical utility. Another method to reduce the limitations of multimodal imaging is the creation of longitudinal prospective multi-institutional studies to standardize imaging techniques and link acute imaging results with long-term functional outcomes. One such example is the TRACK-TBI study, which has leveraged this model to uncover early multimodal imaging markers in mTBI that predict long-term outcomes [
156]. Furthermore, the data generated by studies like TRACK-TBI can be used to train, validate and test machine learning models to uncover prognostic insights into TBI physiology that could be used to guide treatment. Various forms of machine learning models have been used to generate prognostic insights into TBI based on multimodal imaging data, including convolutional neural networks [
157] and linear support vector machine analysis [
158]. It has been suggested that prognostic inormation derived from machine learning models may help guide clinical treatment decisions including appropriateness of aggressive therapies [
159].
In its current form, multimodal neuromonitoring (MMM) consists of collecting and deriving a wide range of cerebral physiologic data, including cerebral physical, hemodynamic, metabolic and electrophysiologic parameters, which are collected and output as a continuous stream of high-frequency data points [
82]. This real time tracking of cerebral physiology has great potential to guide multimodal treatment of secondary injury following TBI. Certain parameters (ICP, P
btO
2) have reliably shown to be effective in guiding treatment of moderate and severely injured TBI patients [
160,
161]. Ischemia and metabolic disruption in TBI leads to abnormal and pathologic electrical events including cortical spreading depolarizations (CSDs) whch are common after TBI and known to play a role in secondary injury [
29,
162,
163,
164]. Reliable means of identifying and targeting CSDs in TBI has been proposed to be a major need in the current landscape of TBI treatment [
162,
165,
166], thus placing electrophysiologic MMM techniques in a valuable role for the guidance of theraputic interventions targeting mechanisms underlying secondary injury in TBI. While no work to date has identified a multimodal treatment for CSDs in TBI, a recent paper showed a benefit from ketamine in multiple preclinical models of CSD [
167], which in conjunction with the successes of ketamine as a multimodal treatment [
33], suggests it may have potential for the multimodal treatment of CSDs.
Currently, many advanced technologies exist for MMM, allowing for real-time acquisition of extensive physiologic and pathophysiological data from patients with TBI. However, MMM has a major operational limitation in that modern MMM generates such high volumes of data that drawing treatment-guiding conclusions is challenging for clinicians [
151]. Additionally, there is a lack of clinical guidelines for the interpretation of the majority of this data, with the most recent Brain Trauma Foundation guidelines including recommendations only on multimodal measurement of ICP, CPP and S
jvO
2-based arteriovenous oxygen content difference due to their known potential for guiding treatment decisions [
9]. Thus modern MMM produces a high volume of data on multiple physiologic parameters, without a large degree of guidance for clinicians caring for patients with TBI. Several recent groups have advocated for the use of machine learning and “big data” analytic approaches to synthesize this information and classify patients into distinct physiologic states, allowing for an individualized yet systematic approach to treating the evolving physiologic derangements caused by TBI [
11,
168,
169]. For example, while the BOOST-II trial was not statistically powered to guide outcomes-oriented treatment, a machine learning analysis of BOOST-II data used a combination of logistic regression, elastic net and random forest machine learning methods to derive clinically applicable predictive models for ICP and brain oxygenation that could be used for early intervention and treatment of intracanial hypertension and hypoxia [
170]. Moving forward, future work linking large high-fidelity data sets of MMM-derived physiologic data with long term clinical outcomes could be used to further drive advances in TBI treatment [
151,
171]. For example, the Targeted Evaulation, Action and Monitoring group integrates a large volume of clinical monitoring data to categorize patients by disease phenotype and deploy a targeted treatment plan based on their clinical status, with the ability to reassess and determine the need for future treatments [
11]. Another novel approach is to integrate TBI serum biomarkers with information from multimodal imaging and MMM to create a individualized “-omics” data set (proteomics, metabolomics, physiomics, etc.), which through extensive machine learning analysis can lead to development of a comprehensive physiology-based theraputic plan [
151].
MMM-guided treatment for TBI is a promising componant of a multimodal treatment paradigm, but has several limitations that may affect implementation. It has been argued that the parameters measured in MMM may only reflect micro-scale physiology in a particular brain region, not the CNS as a whole [
172]. A combination of intraparenchymal sensors has shown promise in better characterizing the general cerebral enviroment and local hemodynamics, however these results must be validated with more established techniques [
173]. While the data derived from MMM can effectively guide treatment [
82,
174], the invasiveness of MMM probes has limited MMM to use in moderate and severe TBI. Invasive MMM is generally considered safe [
175], however noninvasive approaches to MMM could expand its use to the mTBI population. Noninvasive measurements of ICP including optic nerve sheath diameter have been shown to correlate with invasive ICP measurement techniques and help guide surgical management of TBI [
83,
176], and thus may allow MMM to guide treatment in mTBI without insertion of invasive monitoring devices. However noninvasive techniques have significant variation in inter-user reliability [
177], and have not desmonstrated an ability to monitor changes in ICP over time [
178], which significantly limits their ability to guide treatment.