Active clinical trials for "Wounds and Injuries"

Background: Most patients suffering from mild Traumatic Brain Injury (mTBI) present persistent symptoms at one week post injury. A systematic review showed a paucity of studies for short term outcomes following mTBI. Among potential treatments for mTBI, ondansetron has shown promising results based on clinical experience and a single retrospective study. Objectives: The primary objective of this pilot study is to determine the feasibility of a randomized controlled trial evaluating the effect of ondansetron to decrease post concussion symptoms at one week following mTBI in children. More specifically, this pilot study will evaluate the proportion of participants who complete assessment at one week following intervention. Method: This will be a randomized, double blinded, controlled trial performed among children aged between 8 and 17 years old who sustained a mTBI in the previous 24 hours. Participants visiting the emergency department will be randomized to receive one dose of either ondansetron or placebo. The primary outcome of interest is defined as an increase from pre-concussion baseline of at least 3 symptoms from the Post Concussion Symptom Inventory (PCSI) one week following trauma. Secondary outcomes will include time to full recovery, mean PCSI score, and outcomes at one month following head trauma. The primary analysis will compare the proportion of participants with persistence of symptoms at one week in both groups. The full study sample size was calculated to have 90% power to detect a decrease in the proportion of persistence of symptoms from 50% to 30% with an alpha value of 0.05. Approximately 126 patients will therefore be recruited in each arm. The investigators plan to recruit 30 participants (10% of the final population) for the pilot study. Expected results: This pilot study should confirm the feasibility of the randomized controlled trial by showing that 90% of the recruited participants provide data on the primary outcome at one week following intervention. On the long term, the investigator expect that ondansetron will decrease the proportion of patients sustaining persistent symptoms of concussion from 50% to lower than 30%.

The purpose of this study is to examine whether Negative Pressure Wound Therapy is an effective wound treatment compared to conventional wound treatment in the period of time from reoperation to re-suturing in women having surgical wound rupture after Caesarean Section.

Spinal cord injury neuropathic pain (SCI-NP) is a common problem, and when severe, is one of the most problematic of secondary conditions that is minimally to modestly responsive to currently available treatments. It is usually described as burning or stabbing, and is located at or below the level at which their sensation changes from normal to impaired; persons with no feeling at all in their legs for example can experience pain in the legs. The purpose of this project is to further investigate the use of a novel visual stimulation treatment; a technique that has shown benefit in other populations with chronic pain secondary to deafferentation. To accomplish this, a novel treatment - virtual reality (VR) walking - will be examined. Should this treatment show benefit, a portable, accessible means of treatment will be available for persons with SCI and for whom transportation to health care providers is often difficult.

In recent years, salve prepared from Norway spruce (Picea abies) resin and refined honey from manuka myrtle (Leptospermum scoparium), has successfully been used in medical context to treat both acute and chronic surgical wounds. The objective of this prospective, randomized and controlled clinical trial is to investigate healing rate and healing time of surgical wounds in patients, who have undergone peripheral vascular surgery, and whose complicated wounds are candidate for topical treatment with the resin or honey. In addition, factors contributing with delayed wound healing, antimicrobial properties, safety and cost-effectiveness of the resin salve and medical honey will be analyzed.

The purpose of this study is to determine whether the use of negative pleural suction in tube thoracostomy is more effective than water seal alone for the treatment of pneumothorax and/or hemothorax in patients with chest trauma.

The investigators propose to conduct a 2-arm, open-label pilot study to determine if early treatment with amitriptyline will decrease the frequency and severity of headaches after mild traumatic brain injury (TBI). Amitriptyline is a tricyclic antidepressant that is commonly available and inexpensive. It is used as a first-line drug for primary headache prevention in a very low dose range of 10-50 mg. Specific Aim 1 is to conduct a 2-arm open-label study to examine the effect of preventive treatment with amitriptyline on the frequency and severity of headache after mild TBI. Specific Aim 2 is to collect data needed for design of a Phase 3 study, including an estimate of effect size, headache variability, and desirable drug treatment start date. Specific Aim 3 is to examine the feasibility of using headache diaries with individuals with mild TBI. Specific Aim 4 is to establish the safety and tolerability of amitriptyline for the prevention of headache after mild TBI. The investigators hypothesize that early preventive treatment with amitriptyline will avert the development of chronic post-traumatic headache (PTH) as compared to rates of headache from a recent natural history study on PTH after mild TBI. The investigators propose to enroll inpatient subjects from a Level I trauma center as well as from outpatient clinics and from the general community with a diagnosis of mild TBI. Subjects will be screened for current headache. After baseline assessment, 72 subjects with current headache will be randomized to one of 2 groups. Group 1 will immediately begin amitriptyline and or Group 2 will be followed and begin amitriptyline at Day 30. All subjects will be asked to complete a daily headache diary beginning on Day 1 of the study. A detailed medical history and headache survey will be completed. Subjects will have a scheduled stepped increase in the drug dosage every week for 3 weeks to the maximum study dosage of 50 mg. Weekly telephone calls will monitor for adverse events and compliance with the drug and headache diary. Clinic visits will occur at 30, 60 and 90 days. The 30 day clinic visit will include cognitive testing to assess for differences between groups and initiation of drug treatment for Group 2. Both 30 and 60 day visits will include review of headache diary, potential adverse effects, and pill counts. The 90 day visit will be for outcome assessment. In addition, the headache survey will be repeated by telephone at Day 180.

Recent data suggests that subclinical myocardial injury occurs in patients undergoing major abdominal surgery, and the degree of damage is proportionally linked to morbidity and mortality in the short and medium terms. Therefore, new methods of limiting myocardial damage are urgently needed. Ischemic preconditioning is a phenomenon whereby a brief non-lethal ischemia-reperfusion stimulus gives a protective effect to further ischemic insults. In remote ischemic preconditioning (RIPC), this initial stimulus is carried out away from the region of interest, normally a limb. In meta-analysed syntheses the effect size of RIPC in reducing cardiac damage during bypass grafting, as characterised by troponin release, seems to be about 35%. The PRIME Study will assess the value of RIPC in reducing subclinical myocardial injury in patients undergoing major abdominal surgery. Post-operative troponin release will be used as a surrogate marker of myocardial damage. There is no good data on which to build a reliable sample size calculation, therefore we estimated samples sizes using supplementary data from the recent VISION study. The investigators intend to build a clinically powered study from the results of this study. Study design will be by single-centre single-blind randomised control trial. Allocation will be 1:1. All treatments will be carried after induction of anaesthesia, prior to surgery. In the RIPC-treatment group, a blood pressure cuff inflated on an upper limb to 200mmHg for 5 minutes, and then deflated for 5 minutes, repeated in three cycles. In the control group, the blood pressure cuff will not be inflated, but the patient will remain under anaesthesia for the same amount of time. Primary endpoint will be peak post-operative 5th generation hs-TnT (highly sensitive Troponin-T, ng/ml). Secondary endpoint will be hs-TnT area-under-the-curve, major adverse cardiovascular events, serious surgical complications, non-cardiovascular death, quality of life, and length of stay.

The purpose of this study is to determine whether THR-184 when administered around the time of cardiac surgery that requires cardiopulmonary bypass can prevent or ameliorate the development of acute kidney injury.

The goal of the investigators work is to establish how nerve transfers can be best used to improve upper extremity function in patients with cervical level spinal cord injury (SCI). The investigators' hypothesis is that nerve transfers are safe and effective and will improve function and quality of life in patients with loss of upper function due to spinal cord injury. The investigators plan on looking at upper limb function, and health-related quality of life in patients before and after surgery to better understand how patients benefit from these treatments. A nerve transfer procedure can be used to rewire the system to make some muscles work again following SCI. The nerve transfer procedure (which is done in the arm and not at the level of the spinal cord) can be used to bypass the damaged area and to deliver a signal from the brain to a muscle that became disconnected following that injury. A donor nerve is taken from another muscle whose use is not essential and then transferred to help in providing more a more critical function. For example, one type of nerve transfer is done to restore the lost ability to pinch or grasp small objects between the fingers that occurs in many patients with cervical SCI. In this surgery, a donor nerve that normally helps flex the elbow. This nerve can be used because the biceps muscle is also working to flex the elbow. This donor nerve is cut and re-attached to the nerve going to muscles in the forearm that provide pinch by bending the tips of the thumb and index finger. Because the nerve transfer procedure involves cutting and reattaching nerve and muscle tissues, time is required to regenerate working connections between the nerves and muscle as well as to allow the brain to relearn how to use and strengthen that muscle.

Multiple finger defects are common in hand trauma and result in functional disability. These injuries are often complex and severe, and thus reconstructive alternatives are limited. In this study, we use the dorsal homodigital island flaps, based on the dorsal branch of the digital artery, for reconstruction of multiple finger defects. At the final follow-up, we would evaluate the efficacy of this technique.