Active clinical trials for "Death"

The aim of the study is to assess the negative predictive value of the T amplitude variance as a method for risk stratification for patients with an increased risk for SCD.

A severely reduced left ventricular ejection fraction is associated with increased mortality due to pump failure as well as to malignant ventricular arrhythmia. We hypothesize that targeted training may lead to improved survival and to increased parameters of risk stratification for malignant arrhythmia. Additionally, the training may lead to an improved psychological and mental condition of the patients

This study is being carried out to see if a new drug called ticagrelor given twice daily in addition to the ASA therapy decreases the frequency of cardiovascular events (e.g., death from heart disease, heart attack, or stroke).

Out-of-hospital arrest can occur from multiple etiologies. In patients without an obvious reason for the sudden-death event, diagnostic evaluation is not clear. This study is to determine if early imaging with a head-to-pelvis CT scan may improve diagnostic accuracy, speed of diagnosis and potentially clinical outcomes.

This is a prospective multicentric Italian study to evaluate the arrhythmic risk in myotonic dystrophy type 1.

This study's main objective is to investigate whether the application of an adapted person-centred prescription model during a hospital stay would reduce the use of inappropriate or futile regular medications in older people at the end of life, improving their clinical/health statuses and reducing the expense associated with pharmacological treatment. We hypothesised that applying this modified method could optimise pharmacotherapeutic indicators and the expense associated with the pharmacological treatment of hospitalised patients

In light of declining autopsy rates around the world, post-mortem MR imaging is a promising alternative to conventional autopsy in the investigation of infant death. A major drawback of this non-invasive autopsy approach is the fact that histopathological and microbiological examination of the tissue is not possible. The objective of this prospective study is to compare the performance of minimally invasive, virtual autopsy, including CT-guided biopsy, with conventional autopsy procedures in a paediatric population. Foetuses, newborns, infants and children that are referred for autopsy at three different institutions associated with the University of Zurich will be eligible for recruitment. All bodies will be examined with a commercial CT and a 3 Tesla MRI scanner, and investigators will be blinded to the results of conventional autopsy. After cross-sectional imaging, CT-guided tissue sampling will be performed by a multifunctional robotic system (Virtobot) allowing for automated post-mortem biopsies. Virtual autopsy results will be classified with regards to the likely final diagnosis and major pathological findings and compared to the results of conventional autopsy, which remains the diagnostic gold standard. This interdisciplinary study will determine whether virtual autopsy will narrow the gap in information between non-invasive and traditional autopsy procedures.

The overall purpose of this investigation is to better understand factors contributing to the high incidence of prone sleep positioning in African-American infants. In addition, the investigators are interested in investigating other races and ethinicities to understand their beliefs and perceptions and determine differences socioeconomically and socioculturally within and between groups. The investigators will address the following specific aims: (-) To compare knowledge, attitudes, and practices regarding infant sleep position in parents of higher and lower SES. (-) To identify risk factors for non-use of recommended supine sleep position in families with higher and lower SES (-) to develop a phenomenologic understanding of the decisions made by parents of higher SES and lower SES who do nt use recommended supine sleep position, using qualitative techniques.

Background: Optimizing the basic palliative care has been shown beneficial to patients in end-of-life care, the general practitioner (GP) having a pivotal role in the health care system, providing comprehensive and continued medical care. The aim of the study is to investigate the effect of a complex intervention in general practice on GPs' awareness of and confidence in providing end-of-life care. Method: A follow-up study among 404 general practices in Central Denmark Region. The participating general practices will get the opportunity to receive education in palliative care and access to an electronic support, which provides advice on palliative care and an overview of the palliative population in each medical practice. The education and the support will focus on patients suffering from either metastatic cancer or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (GOLD stage 4). The end-of-life care delivered by the GPs to their deceased patients will be analysed, based on questionnaires to GPs and register data related to the deceased patients before and after the intervention, . Primary outcomes: Place of death of deceased patients, time spent at home, and number of hospital admissions in the last three months of the patients' lives. Secondary outcomes: Number and kinds of contacts between GPs and patients, use of relevant medicine and of the 'Safety Box'. Finally GPs' confidence concerning palliative care will be assessed in questionnaires.

The prevalence of severe dyspnoea among terminally ill patients has been reported as 70% and 90% for lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients, respectively. Current management to dyspnoea includes opioids, psychotropic drugs, inhaled frusemide, Heliox 28 and oxygen. Conventional oxygen supplementation is often used in these patients, but it may be inadequate, especially if they require high flows (from 30L/min to 120L/min in acute respiratory failure). High-flow oxygen nasal cannula (HFONC) is a new technological device in high-flow oxygen system that consists of an air-oxygen blender (allowing from 21% to 100% FiO2) which generates the gas flow rate up to 55 L/min and a heated humidification system. This technology may have an important role in reducing respiratory distress in do-not-intubate patients. Some HFONC's beneficial effects are the washout of the nasopharyngeal dead space reducing rebreathing of CO2 and improvement oxygenation through greater alveolar oxygen concentration; a better matching between patient's inspiratory demand and oxygen flow; generation of a certain level of positive pressure (PEEP) contributing to the pulmonary distending pressure and recruitment; improvement of lung and airway mucociliary clearance due to the heated and humidified oxygen; and patient's comfort because of the nasal interface allowing feeding and speech. The investigators hypothesize that patients supported with HFONC need less opioids to decrease dyspnoea.