In recent years much progress has been made in the field of neurochemi cal monitoring for the acutely injured brain. The development of safe continuous microdialysis techniques coupled with microanalytical metho dology can generate semi-continuous time profiles of the changes in nu merous brain analytes such as lactate, glucose, pyruvate, excitatory a mino acids, structural amino acids, indicators of free radical generat ion, cytokines, adenosine, and neuroprotective drugs. Descriptive stud ies have shown profound, prolonged, and severe abnormalities in many o f the analytes measured, and the...