Active clinical trials for "Systemic Inflammatory Response Syndrome"

Brief Summary Cerebral Autoregulation is a well known physiological response to blood pressure changes to maintain the cerebral perfusion. The critically ill patients are submitted to different situations that can impair the cerebral autoregulation as sepsis, sedation drugs and mechanical ventilation. The delirium on ICU has been described as a bad prognosis factor, increasing the mortality and length of stay. The physiopathology of delirium has been related to cerebral perfusion. The delirium has been related to long term cognitive impairment. Material and Methods: This is a physiological prospective study that will be done in a 14 bed medical-surgical ICU. The investigators will enroll 100 ventilated patients, septic and non-septic. The investigators will measure cerebral autoregulation every 48-72 hours from admission on ICU. Neurological biomarkers (Neurological Specific Enolase, S100 beta and Vascular Endothelial Growing Factor) will be done at inclusion, 72 hours and 7 days. Clinical data, delirium presence, analytic data and ventilatory parameters will be registered every day. At hospital discharge, a psychologist will do a cognitive evaluation using specific tests. The cognitive evaluation will be repeated at 3, 6 and 12 months. Anticipate results: Some items like mechanical ventilation, sepsis and sedation can impair cerebral autoregulation. The impairment of cerebral autoregulation is related to delirium in ICU and long cognitive impairment.

The primary objective of the proposed study will be to determine if a multi-modality teaching curriculum utilizing high-fidelity simulation and didactic lecture will result in sustained improvement by internal medicine residents in written knowledge and clinical performance when compared to residents receiving a curriculum utilizing only didactic lecture. The investigators hypothesis is that the addition of high-fidelity simulation to a traditional didactic lecture curriculum will result in sustained and superior written knowledge and practical performance when compared to a group receiving only didactic lecture on the same topic. Specifically, the investigators will be assessing internal medicine resident knowledge and performance in the area of sepsis in the hospitalized patient, and will shape the investigators teaching curriculum around this focus.

This study will investigate whether early exercise in critically ill patients will decrease inflammatory markers, increase pro-inflammatory markers and prevent loss of muscle mass.

In this randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study, the investigators will assess whether preoperative disruption of the gut microbiota by a course of broad spectrum antibiotics will attenuate the postoperative systemic inflammatory response after on-pump cardiac surgery

The aim of this study is to determine the effects of fluid alternations, hemodynamic changes, mechanical ventilation, pharmacologic agents, positional changes, and comorbidities on the Peripheral Intravenous waveform Analysis (PIVA) signal.

To evaluate the efficacy of enteral administration of bovine lactoferrin (bLf) in the reduction of probable late sepsis or microbiologically proven in preterm infants with birth weight ≤ 1500 gr and / or gestational age ≤ 32 weeks.

SIRS trial is a large simple study in which high-risk patients undergoing cardiac surgery requiring the use of cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) are randomly allocated to receive a pulse dose of Methylprednisolone or a matching placebo. Cardiopulmonary bypass initiates a systemic inflammatory response that facilitates development of post-operative complications. SIRS will confirm or deny the potential clinical benefits of suppressing this response through the use of systemic steroids. Specifically, does 250 mg of intravenous Methylprednisolone given twice, once on anesthetic induction and again on CPB initiation, result in improved early survival and less myocardial infarction in high-risk cardiac surgery patients requiring CPB?

Children who are critically ill often require large amounts of fluid during their acute illness. It has been shown in multiple studies that appropriate administration of fluid decreases morbidity and mortality, but giving too much fluid can also cause increased morbidity and mortality. It is often difficult to discern from physical exam, vital signs and labs if the amount of fluid that has been given is appropriate or if a pediatric patient requires more fluid. Pulse pressure variation (PPV) is the change in blood pressure when a patient is on a ventilator or breathing machine. PPV has been used in multiple adult studies to help predict fluid needs in a critically ill patient. In this study, we would like to investigate if PPV can help better predict if critically ill pediatric patients in the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) need fluid. The investigators hope that by having the additional information that PPV can provide, physicians can more judiciously give fluid and thereby improve morbidity of critically ill patients in the PICU.

Activation of blood platelets is a typical finding in patients with systemic inflammation and sepsis.They seem to mediate key pro-inflammatory mediator secretion, immune-cell activation while their adhesion to the endothelium enhances the pro-coagulatory activity of endothelial cells impairing microcirculation thus, may lead to multiple organ dysfunction. However, the exact effects of bacterial products on platelet function have not been found to be consistent and may vary according to the species, the timing of the study, and the pathogenesis of sepsis. Data vary, including both increased and decreased platelet reactivity and aggregation among patients with sepsis compared to healthy controls. Defining platelet's behaviour during sepsis is particularly important in view of recent findings revealing potential association between antiplatelet therapy and reduction in short term mortality, incidence of acute lung injury and intensive care unit admission in critically ill patients.This study aims to measure P2Y12 mediated platelet reactivity, -using the point-of-care P2Y12 VerifyNow assay, in platelet reactivity units (PRU)- along different stages of sepsis, including bacteremia/uncomplicated infection, sepsis, severe sepsis and septic shock. Subgroup follow up of patients going along different stages will also be performed. At the end of this study analysis of clinical and laboratory findings in correlation with platelet reactivity will be performed to assess platelet aggregation during sepsis.

The aim of this investigation is to longitudinally quantify host gene expression and serum proteins in children with infectious and non-infectious SIRS. The investigators hypothesize that children with non-infectious SIRS, with bacterial infection associated SIRS, or with viral infection associated SIRS will exhibit distinct patterns of host gene expression and serum proteins. The investigators further hypothesize that it should be possible to discover sets of mRNA or protein biomarkers that will permit unambiguous diagnosis of non-infectious SIRS, SIRS associated with bacterial infection, and SIRS associated with viral infection.