Active clinical trials for "Wounds and Injuries"

In the search for a novel marker of stroke that could be rapidly assessed in blood, the investigators developed a point-of-care (POC) lateral flow device (LFD) that rapidly (< 15 min) detects levels of a biomarker that is released into blood following neuronal injury associated with stroke and traumatic brain injury. The protein's expression in human brain should serve as a useful biomarker of neuronal injury in stroke and traumatic brain injury.

The investigators are trying to evaluate the clinical effect of remote ischemic postconditioning on liver graft function and postoperative renal function in subjects undergoing living-donor liver transplantation.

The study is to examine the effectiveness of cleansing wound with pressurized irrigation method compared with conventional practice of swabbing on the wound healing and infection of acute and chronic wound, and to evaluate the patient's physical symptoms related to wound, patient's satisfaction to cleansing method, and cost of materials used between the two groups. Patients with acute or chronic non-sutured wounds as well as being eligible to exclusion criteria will be recruited and randomly assigned to be cleansed using either: pressurized irrigation method (experimental group) or swabbing method (control group). 244 patients will be recruited in the study. This will take place in four community health centres run by the Hospital Authority in Hong Kong. The wounds of participants will be cleansed using the assigned method for a six week period. The clinic staff nurse is responsible for the ongoing assessment of the wound. Wound assessment will be undertaken at enrolment and upon healing of the wound or at the end of six-week period if the wounds have not healed. Demographic data and information related to the wound -wound size +/- wound volume, wound culture swab, and symptoms -wound discomfort, pain and odour will be collected at enrolment. Information related to the wound and subjective measures of patient satisfaction -feeling of cleanliness, liking, and of staff satisfaction -feeling user-friendliness, accessibility, cleanliness, liking to the cleansing method using VAS will be assessed at completion of treatment. A list of cost measurements for the wound cleansing would also be captured.

The overall purpose of this research is to evaluate the physical changes that occur over time after fat grafting for craniofacial trauma. This protocol is similar to an existing study (IRB# PRO0906101) presently conducted at the University of Pittsburgh by the same research team which utilizes fat grafts. The preparation of the fat graft material in each clinical trial is processed differently evaluating the effects of graft resorption after treatment.

Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a devastating medical problem that affects thousands of civilian and military personnel in the United States. Spinal cord injuries (SCI) predispose individuals to impaired fitness, obesity, glucose intolerance and insulin resistance, placing them at greater risk for diabetes and coronary artery disease. These are devastating problems that occur frequently because of changes in body composition and reduced level of physical activity. Skeletal muscle wasting plays a central role in altered metabolism after SCI. Functional electrical stimulation (FES) is an effective rehabilitation tool that has been used to train the paralyzed skeletal muscles and which has shown some ability to ameliorate the deleterious effects of SCI on metabolism, particularly on insulin sensitivity. However, its ability to reverse skeletal muscle wasting is modest; most studies report limited gains in muscle mass and workload with highly variables outcomes from one study to another. This proposal was stimulated by the findings that a program of neuromuscular electrical stimulation resistance exercise prior to initiating functional electrical stimulation lower extremity cycling (FES-LEC) improves the gains in muscle mass and workload observed with FES. The specific objectives for the current proposal are to compare the impact of FES following evoking skeletal muscle hypertrophy of the lower extremity versus initiating FES cycling without introducing the hypertrophy effects on insulin sensitivity, control of blood sugar levels, oxygen uptake and amounts of muscle tissue and fat deposition. These studies could potentially have significant effects on thousands of people that will experience an SCI in the future as well as those living with SCI where prolonged paralysis is a major quality of life issue. There is a major need to investigate the mechanisms lead to maximize the benefits of FES applications and to understand cellular or molecular events that are associated with muscle hypertrophy and lead to promoting metabolic health after SCI. The designed study will provide a greater understanding regarding utilization of energy sources (like fats and sugars) in muscle

The purpose of this study is to determine whether exercising (walking) at different intensities increases levels of factors in the blood and saliva that are known to impact neuroplasticity (how the connections in the spinal cord and brain can change) and if these levels are changed by pairing exercise with a single dose of commonly used prescription drugs or by your mood.

Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) is damage to the brain caused by a head injury or illness/disease such as stroke or aneurysm. ABI is often associated with poor awareness into ongoing symptoms of damage to the brain, which can be cognitive, physical, and psychological. A multi-disciplinary rehabilitation programme is recommended to help with such symptoms. However, without self-awareness of difficulties, people with ABI can have poor motivation to take part. The study aims to discover whether showing people a short 'preparatory' video about ABI rehabilitation has an effect on self-awareness, and their motivation to take part in rehabilitation offered to them. The study also aims to investigate the feasibility of using the preparatory video on a larger scale across inpatient ABI rehabilitation, by exploring whether staff find delivering the video easy to incorporate into routine practice. People invited to take part in the study will be recruited from a specialist inpatient brain injury rehabilitation unit (BIRT). People who are approached will be given information about what the study will involve, and can choose not to take part. Each participant will be asked to fill out a series of questionnaires. They will then be supported by staff to watch a short video every two/three days, over four weeks. Half of the participants will be shown the video right away, while the other half will wait two weeks, to allow for comparisons between the groups. The video will aim to improve understanding of the kinds of emotional and/or practical difficulties they may be experiencing, and will inform participants about what rehabilitation might be like. After they have regularly watched the video for four weeks both sets of participants will be asked to complete another set of questionnaires, and the staff will be asked to complete an evaluation of how they found delivering the video.

Background: Patients with spinal cord injury (SCI) have a higher prevalence of cardiovascular diseases compared to the healthy population. Aerobic exercise training is one of the recommended treatments. However, literature regarding the effect of aerobic training on patients with SCI is scarce. This study evaluated changes in parameters of exercise physiology and serum myokines immediately after exercise and after a training program among patients with SCI. Method: Male patients with SCI and age- and sex-matched healthy individuals were recruited. Cardio-pulmonary exercise testing (CPET) was used to determine oxygen uptake at peak exercise and anaerobic threshold in both groups. The patients with SCI attended aerobic exercise training for 36 sessions within 12-16 weeks. Basic data, hemodynamic and exercise physiology parameters, and serum myokine (myostatin, insulin like growth factor, and follistatin) concentrations were measured pre- and post-exercise in both groups, and were repeated in patients with SCI post-training.

This study aims to investigate whether the spacing of the interrupted cutaneous sutures affects surgical wound cosmesis on the face and neck. In other words, the investigators would like to determine which of the following yields a more cosmetically appealing scar: many closely approximated sutures or fewer, more widely spaced sutures. The investigators wish to compare the effects of two versus five millimeter spacing between sutures.

This study will examine the safety and feasibility of using an exoskeleton in subjects who are less than 6 months post spinal cord injury (SCI).