Active clinical trials for "Critical Illness"

The objective of this pilot trial is to assess the feasibility of forced fluid removal in patients admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) with high-risk AKI and severe fluid overload. The intervention will use furosemide infusion and/or continuous renal replacement therapy (CRRT) to achieve and maintain a neutral cumulative fluid balance. The intervention will be compared to standard of care as reflected in the kidney disease improving global outcome (KDIGO) guidelines.

The purpose of this study is to assess the impact of different feeding solutions on patients with breathing difficulty being supported by a breathing machine. The aim of the study is to determine if high fat-low carbohydrate feeding reduces the carbon dioxide production in patients with respiratory failure.

The study will investigate the effects of neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES) in critically ill patients. The objective of this study will be investigate the effects of neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES) in critically ill patients.

More and more people are surviving emergency, life-threatening illnesses. However, survival often comes at a cost to patients' wellbeing. Many suffer from being so ill in ways not necessarily related to their original illness. Patients struggle with their normal activities of daily living or to do the job they did before. They struggle to live independently, to enjoy a normal diet, or to be pain-free. This leads to a decrease in their quality of life, placing a burden on families. Investigators don't have a good method of highlighting and representing the issues faced by these patients. Investigators have recently implemented a service innovation project, using an an app-based questionnaire in two groups (patients that survive emergency surgery, and those who survive critical illness) to highlight these problems early, so that individuals are offered the right help and services to return to living their lives as fully as possible. Patients will be asked to fill in an electronic (on-line) questionnaire while in hospital, and at 1 and 6 months afterwards. Along side this investigators intend to perform a qualitative assessment of the value and acceptability of this project. Investigators will interview patients approximately 2-3 weeks after the questionnaire completion at 1 and 6 months to determine how easy it was to use, how acceptable the process was and how well it described and highlighted their problems. If this system works, it would become part of routine care, extended to patients admitted as emergencies to hospital, and used to develop a national program for all UK hospital patients

The purpose of the study is to conduct a pilot randomized trial of a program designed to enhance equitable communication and emotional support for families of critically ill patients in order to determine feasibility, acceptability, and participant experience with the program. The primary study procedures include: chart abstraction, questionnaires, meetings with ICU support counselors, meetings with ICU physicians and care team, audio recordings of these meetings (optional), and interviews with study participants (optional). Study participants include: 70 critically ill patients with acute respiratory failure (enrolled with the consent of their Legally Authorized Representative) and their primary surrogate decision makers as well as ICU support counselors and ICU care teams (physicians, nurses, social workers).

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the efficacy and safety of fospropofol disodium for injection compared to propofol for sedation in mechanically ventilated ICU patients.

Getting the right dose of antibiotic promptly is an important part of treating infections. Unfortunately, when an infection is severe (sepsis) the body changes how it processes antibiotics. Consequently, some people with severe infection retain antibiotics for too long (risking adverse effects), whilst others excrete antibiotics too quickly (risking under-treatment). Mathematical models can help researchers understand drug handling variability (known as pharmacokinetics) between people. These models require very accurate information about drug administration and drug blood concentration timings. Researchers usually rely on someone recording these timings, but recording errors can make models inaccurate. We would like to understand if using data from routinely used electronic drug infusion devices (recording the exact time of administration) can improve the accuracy of pharmacokinetic models. We intend to investigate this with an antibiotic (vancomycin) that clinicians already routinely monitor blood concentrations for. Adults and children treated at St George's Hospital intensive care units will be invited to participate in the study which will last for 28-days within a 14-month period. Participants will donate a small amount of extra blood and provide researchers access to their clinical data. Blood will be taken at special times during vancomycin treatment from lines placed as part of standard treatment, minimising any pain or distress. There will be no other changes to patient's treatment. In the future, data from this study might help change the way we dose antibiotics. The National Institute for Health and Care Research and Pharmacy Research UK are supporting the study with funding.

The dominating proportion of patients in the ICU are men. Studies indicate that men receive more mechanical ventilation, vasoactive drugs, renal replacement therapy, invasive monitoring and have longer length of stay in the ICU. These differences do not unambiguously translate into a survival benefit for men; if survival would be altered if women were admitted to ICU in the same extent is unknown. Factors affecting ICU admission include age, co-morbidities, physiological parameters (indicating severity of the acute illness) and, additionally, the number of available ICU beds. Factors that should not affect ICU admission include patient gender or ethnicity. This study aims at studying if bias against women and people of certain ethnicities exist. Do clinicians have differing thresholds for ICU admission due to non-medical reasons? The investigators propose testing this hypothesis using a blinded randomized factorial survey study.

Background: Low-frequency neuromuscular electrical stimulation (NMES) attenuates the loss of muscle mass of Intensive Care Unit (ICU) patients. However, it has been shown that medium-frequency NMES may be better than low-frequency for the maintenance of skeletal muscle mass in healthy subjects. Objective: to compare the effects of low-frequency and medium-frequency NMES, along with a standard physical therapy (SPT) programme, on the attenuation of skeletal muscle atrophy in critically ill patients. Methods: Fifty-four critically ill patients admitted into intensive care unit (ICU) and on mechanical ventilation (MV) participated in this randomized, single-blinded, experimental study. Participants were allocated to one of the following groups: Control Group (CG), received a standard lower limb physical therapy (SPT) programme, 2x/day; Low-frequency NMES Group (LFG), received lower limb SPT+NMES at 100 Hz, 2x/day; and Medium-frequency NMES Group (MFG), received lower limb SPT+NMES at 100 Hz and carrier frequency of 2500 Hz, 2x/day. The primary outcome was the thickness and quality of the quadriceps muscle, evaluated with ultrasonography while patients were in ICU. Secondary outcomes, assessed at various stages of recovery, were strength, functionality, independence for activities of daily living, quality of life, and total days hospitalized.

Malnutrition is a major risk factor for morbidity and mortality of patients managed in intensive care unit. Early recognition and treatment of adult malnutrition are recommended in acute care settings especially for patients requiring mechanical ventilation. Biochemical indicators like serum concentrations of albumin and prealbumin (transthyretin) have a tradition of being used as markers of nutritional status but remains influenced by nonnutritional factors. A recent assessment of quadriceps muscle diameter with ultrasound method has gained interest for screening and follow-up of muscle weakness at the bedside in critically ill patients. In this light, the MALICUS project aims to investigate the validity of ultrasound as measurement tool for assessing malnutrition acquired in intensive care unit. Skeletal muscle is central to cytokine regulation and it contributes 85% of total body glucose clearance. Some research findings suggest that muscle wasting is a smoldering inflammatory state partially driven by cytokines and oxidative stress but these conclusions need to be investigated in context of critically ill patients and perioperative settings. The investigators search to determine impact of inflammatory biomarkers (IL-1, IL-6 and TNF-α) and oxidative stress (evaluated by quantifying the global anti-oxidative defenses in patient with an original method (Patrol® test) based on the use of excited molecular oxygen (singlet oxygen) as a source of ROS on erosion of lean body mass measure with quadriceps muscle ultrasound. Consequently, in an ancillary study of the MALICUS project, the investigators wish to investigate interaction between acute inflammation and muscle wasting.