Active clinical trials for "Critical Illness"

Patients with acute severe health problems often need to be admitted to specialised hospital wards called Intensive Care Units (ICUs) where they can receive emergency treatment such as mechanical ventilation to support their breathing function via a machine, and sedative medications to reduce pain and anxiety associated with the severity of their condition. Although these interventions and treatments are often necessary to support patients' vital functions, they also carry the risk of important side effects. Sedative drugs use in particular, has a significant impact on short- and long-term outcomes. Despite international guidelines to help clinicians in the use of these drugs, there appears to be large variability in their use around the world such as use of different types of drugs, variable doses or rate of continuous infusions, etc. However, even with this known variable practice across the world, there are no large-scale international studies looking at the use of sedative drugs, pain-relief medications and drugs to control agitation and restlessness in ICUs. Therefore, the investigators propose a multinational study to better understand how different ICUs use these drugs and if they follow the guidance published by expert clinicians. The investigators will collect data in more than 100 ICUs across the world and include more than 2000 adult patients admitted to ICU and needing mechanical breathing. There are no active interventions on patients that are part of this research study and data collection from patients medical records is retrospective. All patients included will receive the standard of care as per their local intensive care unit. Also, in a 2-arm sub-study, the investigators will collect retrospective data from medical records of patients admitted to ICU before and during the COVID-19 pandemic to explore how sedation, analgesia and delirium practice has changed during this exceptional timeframe.

It has been well documented that patients in the intensive care unit (ICU) are susceptible to developing neurocognitive and musculoskeletal complications because of various factors, including the nature of the critical illness, medications, over-sedation, and pain. Neuro-stimulants are used to speed up physical and mental processes through the increase in neurotransmitter, which translates into increase in arousal, wakefulness, attention, memory, mental and motor processing speed. The investigators reviewed the literature and described the clinical characteristics for a case series of adult patients admitted to COVID and non-COVID ICU between January 2017 and June 2020, who received modafinil to promote wakefulness and improve cognition at the King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre (KFSH&RC) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The secondary goals to describe the change of Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) before and after the start of modafinil therapy, ICU and hospital length of stay, discharge disposition, adverse drug effects, and mortality rate.

Accurate determination of critically ill patient of being febrile or not is an essential part of management critically ill patients as it prompt investigating the underlying cause and initiating therapeutic action. Pulmonary artery catheter thermistor is considered the gold standard for temperature measurement . Central non-vascular thermometer such as esophageal, bladder and rectal thermometer showed excellent correlation and agreement with pulmonary artery catheter thermistor and has been accepted as alternative methods for core body temperature assessment. However, those methods are invasive and cannot be tolerated in conscious patients. Peripheral thermometer such as oral, axillary and tympanic membrane thermometer are either impractical in unconscious patient and/or carry the risk of trauma and infection. Infrared thermography (IRT) is a non-contact and non-invasive imaging approach that enable real-time estimation of body temperature by detecting infrared emission. IRT had been used for screening for mass detection of febrile patients at airport at times of infectious disease outbreak. In adult population, IRT showed good accuracy in detecting febrile patients in emergency department; however, those studies used 37.7⁰ C as the fever threshold and the reference standard was either oral 6 or tympanic membrane thermometer. No studies to the best of our knowledge had evaluated the IRT accuracy in detecting fever in critically ill patients using esophageal thermometer as a reference method.

Since 2000, various emerging infectious diseases have repeatedly caused serious impact on the health of the global population and the healthcare systems. With the growing international transportation and improving accessibility of the healthcare systems, hospitals have been inevitably the first sentinels dealing with emerging infectious diseases. The biological disasters, such as the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2003, the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) outbreak in South Korean in 2015, and the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak this year, challenged our vulnerable healthcare systems and caused great loss of lives. Regarding the ongoing global epidemics and possible community outbreaks of the COVID-19, the management of biological disasters for an overcrowded emergency department should be planned. In the early 2020, the emergency department used a double-triage and telemedicine method to treat non-critical patient with suspected COVID-19. This application reduced the exposure time of the first responders and reserve adequate interview quality. However, for the critical patients treated in the isolated resuscitation rooms, the unique environment limited the teamwork and communication for the resuscitation team. These factors might led to poorer quality of critical care. The investigators designed a telemedicine-teamwork model, which connected the isolation room, prepare room and nursing station by an video-conferencing system in the emergency department. This model try to break the barriers of space between the rooms and facilitate the teamwork communications between each unit. Besides, by providing a more efficient workflow, this model could lower the total exposure time for all workers in the contaminated area. This study was conducted to evaluate the benefits of the telemedicine-teamwork model and provide a practical, safe and effective alternative to critical care of the patients with suspected highly infectious diseases.

Is precariousness a risk factor for COVID-19 mortality in intensive care units ? Abstract Background: During the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, the first wave overwhelmed hospitals in Paris area (Ile-de-France) with a variable impact depending on the territory. Several studies highlighted variable ICU mortality rates during COVID-19 surges across territories (10 to 60%) with higher rates in those most affected by poverty. We assessed the impact of precariousness, as an independent risk factor, on mortality linked to Covid-19 between ICUs at Delafontaine hospital and Ambroise Paré hospital. Method: Investigators carry out a retrospective observational cohort study of consecutive ICU patients aged ≥ 18 years admitted at Delafontaine and Ambroise Paré hospitals during the first wave of the Covid-19 outbreak in order to compare mortality rates according to predefined risk factors (age, diabetes, arterial hypertension, BMI, active solid or haematological cancer, IGS2, poverty rate at the threshold of 60% (%) according to the island grouped for statistical information (IRIS)37 of the patient, invasive ventilation or not) that include precariousness. Results: Conclusion:

Patients who are critically ill with COVID-19 requiring life support in an intensive care unit (ICU) have increased risk of morbidity and mortality. Currently the ICU community does not know what effect the disease, the ICU admission, physiotherapy interventions and life support have on their long-term quality of life and whether they can return to their pre-illness level of function following ICU. COVID-Recovery will describe the physiotherapy interventions delivered to critically ill patients with COVID-19. In survivors, COVID-Recovery will utilise telephone follow-up of ICU survivors to assess disability-free survival and quality of life at 6 months after ICU admission. Additionally, COVID-Recovery will identify if there are predictors of disability-free survival. COVID-Recovery will aim to select up to 300 patients diagnosed with COVID-19 from ICUs in Australia. If they survive to hospital discharge, patients will be invited to receive a telephone questionnaire at 6 months after the ICU admission that aims to assess their long-term outcomes, including physical, cognitive and emotional function, quality of life, and whether they have been able to return to work following ICU discharge. To describe the experience of critical illness in survivors of COVID-19 and their family members. To explore and describe functional recovery, respiratory system function and respiratory health morbidity up to 6 months after ICU admission in persistently critically ill adults with COVID-19

For limiting COVID-19 spreading, the World Health Organisation (WHO) recommended worldwide confinement on 2010. In France, unessential institutions were closed on March 14th and population confinement was decided on March 17th. Quarantine and/or confinement could lead to psychological effects such as confusion, suicide ideation, post-traumatic stress symptoms or anger COVID-19 outbreak highlighted a considerable proportion of health care workers (HCW) with depression, insomnia, anxiety and distress symptoms. In front line, facing the virus with the fear of contracting it and contaminate their closest. During previous outbreaks (H1N1, SARS), HCWs have been shown to experience such negative psychological effects of confinement as well as work avoidance behaviour and physical interaction reduction with infected patients (4-7). In France, Covid 19 outbeak led to increase ICU bed capacity with a full reorganization of the human resources. Some caregivers were reassigned to newly setup units admitting or not Covid-19 patients. In the same time, non-caregivers were also encouraged to work at home whenever possible. Thus, every hospital staff member's private and professional life could be altered by the Covid-19 outbreak. As all these changes in the daily life could induce psychological disturbances, the present study was aimed at assessing the acute anxiety level (main objective) of the staff in our Tertiary University Hospital, (6300 employees). Secondarily, the self-reported insomnia, pain, catastrophism and work avoidance behaviour levels were assessed

Small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO) syndrome, though associated with potentially serious complications, has not been adequately studied to date in critically ill patients hospitalized in intensive care units (ICU). A modified method for SIBO diagnosis is employed concerning a standard breath test. Specifically, as all participants are intubated and in need of mechanical ventilation, SIBO diagnosis is based on a non-invasive modified technique for sampling exhaled air from the ventilator tubes and performing a standard hydrogen breath test. The primary objective of this study is assessment of the prevalence of SIBO on ICU patients. Secondary outcomes include investigation of the effects of SIBO on ventilator associated pneumonia, as well as ICU length of stay and all-cause in-hospital mortality rate in critically ill patients.

This study prospectively observed the complications intended as diarrhea or sti-sis that critically ill patients developed within 7 days after ICU admission. In addition, secondary aims investigated through bioimpedenziometry the loss of lean body mass and changes in phase angle during the same period of ICU stay.

Introduction: Secondary pneumonia is frequently seen in COVID-19 cases followed up intubated, and high mortality rates can be observed. Isolation of the agent with bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) culture or endotracheal aspirate (ETA) culture may increase the success of treatment. This study aimed to retrospectively analyze the results of BAL and ETA cultures in intubated COVID-19 cases. Methods: We routinely apply BAL culture with bronchoscopy or ETA culture within the first 48 hours after intubating. We retrospectively screened cases who underwent BAL and ETA. They were divided into two groups: Group B and E. Evaluated parameters were compared in both groups. Results: Demographic data and blood test results were similar in both groups. Intensive care unit (ICU) and intubation durations, and culture positivity were statistically significantly higher in Group B. Although not statistically significant, the mortality rate was higher in Group E. The most growth microorganisms were Candida species. Conclusion: Mortality rates were consistent with the literature. Since the microorganism isolation rate is higher with BAL and antimicrobial treatment is applied more effectively; early deaths were prevented and stay periods were prolonged. In contrast, these durations were shorter in the ETA group due to higher mortality. In intubated COVID-19 cases, a more effective treatment process can be carried out by clearing the airway with fiberoptic bronchoscopy and by specifically planning the treatment according to the BAL culture. This may have a positive effect on prognosis and mortality.