Active clinical trials for "Critical Illness"

Patients with subarachnoid hemorrhage are prone to suffer from dysnatriemia. Evidence shows that hyponatriemia is associated with increased incidence of vasospasm, brain swelling and mortality in these patients. Patients with subarachnoid hemorrhage often require large amounts of iv fluids in order to maintain euvolemia and support cardiocirculatory function. Prior evidence shows that the type of infusion fluid significantly influences blood sodium content. Hence, this study evaluated whether the sodium content of the infusion solution impacts mortality and morbidity in patients with subarachnoid hemorrhage.

Critically ill patients are known to develop serious nutritional deterioration during the course of their disease. They develop, from the beginning, a multifactorial protein malnutrition that relates to a poor clinical course and the development of weakness. Due to the increased protein catabolism in this type of patient, there is a rapid degradation of muscle mass and loss of functional proteins, and therefore nutritional support is mandatory. Indeed, achieving a high protein intake may promote a better evolution of the critically ill patient, i.e., maintenance of muscle protein, less deterioration of muscle strength, lower Intensive care unit-acquired weakness (ICUAW), lower mortality, decrease in the number of infections, decrease in days on mechanical ventilation, and days of hospital stay and in ICU. The goal of this clinical trial is to compare the appearance and degree of ICUAW in critically ill patients receiving invasive mechanical ventilation treated with two different doses of protein (1.5 g/kg/day vs.1.0 g/kg/day).

This study aims to determine the ways in which clinician implicit racial biases affect clinician communication with family members of patients near the end of life and to test a novel physician training intervention to reduce the effects of implicit racial bias on quality of communication. Phase 1: A sample of 50 physicians who care for seriously ill patients, including oncologists, critical care physicians and hospital-based internists will participated in a simulated clinical encounter with a Black standardized family member (actor) of a hypothetical case patient. Measures of implicit and explicit bias will be correlated with verbal and nonverbal communication behavior. Phase 2: This is a 2-arm randomized feasibility pilot of an intervention to mitigate the effects of clinician implicit bias on communication behavior. Physicians who treat patients with serious illness including oncologists, critical care physicians and hospital-based internists will be recruited to participate in a communication training session to reduce the effects of implicit bias or a control training session focusing only on communication skills. Their communication behavior will be videotaped during a simulated encounter with a Black standardized family member (actor) of a hypothetical patient with serious illness before and after the training sessions. The communication behavior before and after the training session will be compared between physicians that received the communication skills only intervention versus the physicians that received the communication skills and bias mitigation training. The primary hypothesis is that physicians who receive both the communication skills and the bias mitigation training will have greater improvements in communication skills with the Black standardized caregiver (actor) compared with those who receive only the communication skills training.

Acute kidney injury is a well-recognized complication in critically ill patients. Up to date there is no clinically established method to reduce the incidence or the severity of acute kidney injury. Remote ischemic preconditioning (RIPC) will be induced by three cycles of upper limb ischemia. The aim of the study is to reduce the incidence of AKI by implementing remote ischemic preconditioning (identified by the urinary biomarkers tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinases-2 (TIMP-2) and insulin-like growth factor-binding protein 7(IGFBP7)

The National Academy of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health have called for urgent action to improve the care delivered to the nearly 1,000,000 older Americans who die in intensive care units (ICUs) annually or survive with substantial impairments. These patients often die with distressing symptoms and may receive more invasive, life-prolonging treatment than they would choose for themselves. Moreover, their family members acting as surrogate decision-makers often experience lasting psychological distress from the ICU experience. We will conduct a multicenter randomized trial among 370 incapacitated, critically ill older adults at high risk of death or severe functional impairment to determine whether a multi-component family support intervention can improve the patient- and family-centeredness of care (primary outcome), as well as positively impact a variety of other patient, family, and healthcare delivery outcomes. The multicomponent intervention involves: Proactive family meetings scheduled within 48 hours of ICU admission and approximately every 5-7 days after that. Surrogates will have access (computer, tablet, or mobile phone) to the interactive web-based Family Support Tool. The tool will familiarize families with the ICU and prepare them for their interactions with the clinical team by completing specific sections of the Family Support Tool upon study enrollment, before family meetings, and any other time they wish. The ICU team will receive a tool-generated summary of information about the family before each family meeting, including their main questions and concerns, information about the patient's values and preferences, prognostic expectations, and unmet psychological needs.

The overall goal of this study is to determine whether English-speaking adults who were discharged from an intensive care unit (ICU) at least one month ago and have some level of distress related to their ICU experience will be interested in, willing to use, and satisfied with a new mobile application (app) designed to help the user process a difficult memory. Participants must have internet access and a smartphone in order to use the app. The goal of the app is to help reduce the psychological distress associated with a memory by processing that memory at one's own pace with app guidance. Participants will be asked to use the app for 6 weeks at least 3 times a week for 30 or more minutes at a time. Participants will also be asked to complete questionnaires over a 12-week period. The investigators aim to test how possible and realistic it is for people who were hospitalized with a critical illness to voluntarily use this app to process relevant distressing memories of their hospitalization. The investigators hope that these results will inform the design of a larger trial that will be able to test if this app can reduce distress in this patient population, as the app may offer affordable and accessible help for some patients experiencing illness-related distress.

There is a significant lack of adequately powered randomized clinical trial (RCT) data to determine the comparative safety and effectiveness of sedative treatments in pediatric patients. In many centres the standard of care for sedation in pediatric critical care unit (PCCU) patients includes the use of benzodiazepines despite the known negative effects of increased patient agitation and delirium, which can contribute to longer PCCU and hospital length of stay (LOS). The use of an alternative sedative, dexmedetomidine may reduce negative effects in this population. As such, the investigators plan to conduct a well designed comparative RCT to determine the most effective and safest sedative in this vulnerable population utilizing clinical assessments of sedation levels and delirium instance, electroencephalography (EEG) analysis and patient important outcomes.

A single-centre, two-arm, parallel randomised controlled trial (RCT) to compare the combined effect of early intravenous bolus amino acid supplementation and mobilisation versus standard of care on changes in muscle mass over the first week in ICU. Half of study participants will receive the study intervention (in-bed cycling followed by an intravenous bolus amino acid supplement), while the other half will receive standard of care only.

The aim is to compare the efficacy and tolerability of an immune modulating enteral nutrition formula versus the regular formula on the outcomes of critically ill septic patients by assessment of clinical outcomes, immune profile, tolerability and enteral nutrition intolerance and laboratory markers

While mortality in U.S. pediatric intensive care units (PICUs) is improving, surviving children frequently develop persistent physical, cognitive, and psychological impairments. Over half of critically ill children experience potentially preventable PICU-acquired morbidities, with mechanically ventilated children being at greatest risk. In critically ill adults, randomized trials have shown that progressive mobility, started early (within 3 days of initiating mechanical ventilation), decreases muscle weakness and the duration of mechanical ventilation. However, similar randomized studies have not been conducted in the PICU. The investigator's prior studies revealed that less than 10 percent of critically ill children at the highest risk of functional decline are evaluated by a physical or occupational therapist within 3 days of PICU admission. Given the interplay of sedation, delirium, sleep, and immobility in the PICU, single-component interventions, such as sedation protocolization, have not consistently shown benefit for decreasing mechanical ventilation duration. Thus, the investigators developed the first pediatric-specific, interprofessional intervention (PICU Up!) to integrate goal-directed sedation, delirium prevention, sleep promotion, and family engagement into daily PICU care in order to facilitate early and progressive mobility. The investigators have demonstrated the safety and feasibility of this pragmatic, multifaceted strategy in both single-site and multicenter pilot studies. Hence, the next phase of the investigators research is to evaluate the clinical effectiveness and delivery of the PICU Up! intervention across a range of PICU patients and health systems. The investigators propose a pragmatic, stepped-wedge, cluster randomized controlled trial that will include 10 academic and community hospitals in the United States, with the following Aims: 1) Evaluate if the PICU Up! intervention, delivered under real-world conditions, decreases mechanical ventilation duration (primary outcome) and improves delirium and functional status compared to usual care in critically ill children; and 2) Conduct a multi-stakeholder, mixed-methods process evaluation to identify key contextual factors associated with delivery of PICU Up!. If proven effective, the PICU Up! intervention has potential to profoundly change medical care in the PICU and substantially impact public health by improving outcomes for the growing number of pediatric survivors of critical illness.