A quarter of a century has elapsed since Nils Lundberg published his thesis "Continuous Recording and Control of Ventricular Fluid Pressure In Neurosurgical Practice." This publication, more than any other, propelled continuous monitoring of intracranial pressure from the status of a research tool to become an integral part of neurosurgical intensive care, with wide application in the management of patients with head injuries, intracranial haemorrhage, brain tumours and disorders of the CSF circulation. At the same time, experimental studies by Langfitt and others stimulated investigations of the relationships between intracranial pressure and cerebral blood flow, intracranial pressure volume relationships and studies of the formation and absorption of CSF. By 1972, Mario Brock had realised the extent of the interest in intracranial pressure research and organised the First International Symposium on Intracranial Pressure in Hanover in that year. This was the start of a series of highly successful meetings, subsequently held in Lund (1974), Groningen (1976), Williamsburg (1979) and Tokyo (1982), the proceed ings of which have been published as a uniform series of books. In each of these volumes the up to date status of research and clinical application of intracranial pressure measurement has been presented in a concise yet comprehensive way. The present volume contains the proceedings of the Sixth International Intracranial Pressure Symposium that was held in Glasgow, Scottland, from June 9th to 13th, 1985."

The chapters in this volume are based on presentations made at the Second International Symposium on Nimodipine held in Miami Beach, Florida, USA, on April 25 -28, 1990. The Symposium dealt primarily with the results of recent clinical studies on the effects of nimodipine in acute neurological disor- ders: subarachnoid hemorrhage, acute ischemic stroke, cerebral resuscitation following cardiac arrest and head trauma. The first session was devoted to pharmacology of nimodipine and its effects in various models of cerebral ischemia. Nimodipine was synthesized at the Research Laboratories of Bayer AG, Wuppertal, Germany, by Meyer et al.; its pharmacology was studied initially by Hoffmeister, Kazda, Garthoffand Towart, also in Wuppertal. Nimodipine was found to be a potent cerebral vasodilator and to reduce mortality in stroke-prone spontaneously hypertensive rats. In addition to its cerebrovascu- lar effects, nimodipine was shown to block L-type Ca2+ channels in neurons, to reduce neuronal uptake of Ca2+ and to antagonize various neurotoxins. The beneficial effects of nimodipine in the treatment of disorders of central nervous system may be attributed either to cerebrovascular or to a direct neuronal action with evidence favoring increasingly the latter mechanism.