Active clinical trials for "Critical Illness"

About 70% of critically ill patients require antiinfective therapy. Optimal antibiotic dosing is key to improve patient survival, reduce toxic effects and minimise the emergence of bacterial resistance. There is a growing body of evidence demonstrating the existence of significant changes in pharmacokinetics (PK) in intensive care patients, particularly those with extracorporeal therapy (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), continuous renal replacement therapy (CRRT)). To characterize the effects of extracorporal therapy for critically ill patients, we designed a prospective pilot observational study using a drug monitoring to derive relevant effects of extracorporeal therapy and clinical patient characteristics for the treatment with meropenem, teicoplanin, linezolid, piperacillin/tazobactam, levofloxacin and acyclovir.

In recent years, there has been a large amount of literature reports that normal saline can increase the incidence of renal injury in critically ill patients compared with balanced salt solution.However, no studies have compared the effects of different types of balanced salt solutions on the incidence of renal injury.

Based on the experience of previous pandemics, countries reacted by applying different upgrade strategies to prevent or delay the widespread of the disease. Therefore, measures such as border closure, school closure, restrict social gathering (even shutdown of workplaces), limit population movements, and confinement meaning quarantines at the scale of cities or regions. In public hospitals, several measures have been decided to concentrate the power of care on potential wave of admissions of patients with severe forms of Covid-19. In this purpose, the number of available beds in Intensive Care Units (ICU) has been increased by two-fold and scheduled non-emergency surgical procedure have been cancelled. That means: For the most severe patients, new personals (physician such as anesthesiologists, nurses of other units) have been transferred in ICUs. For the less severe patients, personals of non-busy units have been transferred in busier ones. All these measures lead to major daily-life change sets that could be stressful. In the general population, it has been well documented that quarantine or confinement or isolation could lead to the occurrence of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) syndrome in about 30% overall population. Importantly, high depressive symptoms have been reported in 9% of hospital staff. Numerous symptoms have been reported after quarantine or isolation such as emotional disturbance, depression, stress, low mood, irritability, insomnia, and post-traumatic stress symptoms. In hospital setting, few studies have been performed for assessing the psychological impact of quarantine and isolation. However, two studies reported a high prevalence of burn-out syndrome (BOS) in ICU physician and PTSD syndrome and depression in ICU nurses. As the consequences of all the measures decided and applied during Covid-19 pandemic could be important on caregivers, the present study primarily aims at assessing the prevalence of PTSD syndrome in a large population of caregivers implied or not in Intensive Care Units. The secondary objective were 1) to assess the prevalence of severe depression and anxiety and BOS 2) to isolate potential factors associated with PTSD, severe depression, anxiety or BOS.

Observational comparative effectiveness study of individual patient data using interrupted time series analysis techniques of linked data sources to establish clinical and health economic effects of moving from systemic heparin anticoagulation to regional citrate anticoagulation during continuous renal replacement therapy (CRRT) for patients treated on non-specialist Intensive Care Units (ICUs) in England and Wales.

This study aims at validating the accuracy of the new indirect calorimeter (Q-NRG, COSMED, Italy), developed for the ICALIC multicenter study. The validation of accuracy will only be conducted in Geneva center. The measurements made with the new calorimeter will be compared to the measurements by the mixing chamber method using a mass spectrometer (MAX300-LG, Extrel, USA) for gas composition analysis.

Understanding the Impact of Critical Illness on Falls Risk - a 12 Month Observational Study

The current central dogma of long-term cognitive impairment after intensive care admission suggests an underlying neuroinflammatory dysregulation affecting neuronal function. This pathological process has not been fully elucidated and there has been little research into its genetic associations. Alzheimer's disease (AD) causes cognitive impairment through a process of abnormal beta amyloid deposition and neuronal death through localised activation of the innate immune system. It is the most prevalent disease affecting cognition. The Apolipoprotein E (APOE) gene is implicated in the progression of late-onset Alzheimer's disease and is a recognised neuroinflammatory modulator. It is possible that young individuals exposed to high levels of inflammation may experience an acceleration of this process. This study sets out to look for an association between APOE-∈4 possession and poor cognitive outcome after a major burn injury and intensive care admission.

This study is to find out care of critically ill patients enteral nutrition guidelines for the implementation of the effectiveness of the intervention.

Many serious illnesses are characterised by a lack of oxygen delivery to the body's tissues. This can be due to problems with the circulation, such as when the heart fails to pump blood efficiently or if the blood pressure is very low, or due to changes in the lungs preventing them from transferring oxygen effectively from the air into the blood. Many of the treatments used in critically ill patients are aimed at improving the supply of oxygen-rich blood to the tissues. These include drugs to increase the blood pressure or make the heart pump more forcibly, blood transfusions to increase the amount of oxygen that the blood can carry, and ventilators (breathing machines) to help the lungs introduce more oxygen into the bloodstream. Decisions to use such treatments are based on a number of factors. One of the most important is an assessment of how much oxygen an individual patient is using at a given time. Whilst it is possible to measure average oxygen consumption over a long period of time in healthy individuals, the equipment and techniques needed are simply not practical for routine use in the clinical setting of a critical care unit. Critical care doctors and nurses therefore have to rely on a number of different indicators of the adequacy of the amount of oxygen that is being provided in order to make decisions about how best to treat patients. Unfortunately, all of these have their limitations, are affected by other treatments patients may be receiving, and can be difficult to interpret. Examples include 'mixed venous oxygen saturation' (SvO2), that is the amount of oxygen in the blood coming back to the lungs from the body, ready to have more oxygen added, and blood lactate levels, which give an indication of whether the tissues have enough oxygen to produce the energy they need to function in an efficient manner. Our group has developed a device which can be added easily to the normal equipment used on a critical care ward when a patient is on a ventilator, which can accurately and rapidly measure the amount of oxygen the individual is consuming. This study will provide us with data so the investigators can define a "normal" range of oxygen consumption in these patients, and treatments which alter consumption. In a future study, once the investigators know what the normal range is, they can introduce new techniques to improve oxygen consumption in those patients whose consumption is less than ideal.

The principal aim of this study is to establish if a polymorphism in a gene important for innate immunity to fungi represents a significant risk factor for the development of Candida colonisation and subsequent invasive candidosis in critically ill patients. Incorporation of a screening programme onto a risk-based algorithm for critical care patients would allow more effective targeting of molecular diagnostic tests, anti-fungal prophylaxis and targeted treatment. Sequential critical care patients will be screened for gene polymorphisms and undergo regular screening for Candida colonization.