Clinical Research Directory

Pupillometry vs. BPS (Behavioral Pain Scale) for Analgesia Management in Inpatient Intensive Care Unit Patients on Invasive Mechanical Ventilation

Patients admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) and receiving invasive mechanical ventilation (IMV) frequently require sedation and analgesia to ensure their comfort, prevent pain associated with invasive procedures, and minimize complications related to agitation. Appropriate analgesia management is essential to ensure patient comfort while minimizing the consequences of excessive opioid exposure, including delirium, prolonged mechanical ventilation, extended ICU stays, and the risk of post-ICU syndrome (PICS). While sedation assessment relies on validated tools such as the RASS score, pain assessment in non-communicative patients remains more complex. In practice, it relies primarily on behavioral scales such as the Behavioral Pain Scale (BPS), the only internationally validated scale that has been translated into French and is recommended for use in intensive care. However, these scales have certain limitations, particularly in deeply sedated patients or when motor expression is impaired. Thus, over the past few years, automated pupillometry has been developed to assess pain through the pupillary dilation reflex (PDR), which is an autonomic physiological response to nociception. Indeed, pupillometry allows for the quantitative measurement of the PDR induced by standardized, noninvasive nociceptive stimulation. This measurement yields the Pupillary Pain Index (PPI), which serves as an objective, reproducible, and observer-independent indicator of nociception. Measuring the PPI could enable earlier and more individualized adjustment of analgesia, leading to a reduction in painful episodes and opioid exposure. In this context, this randomized study aims to compare, in patients on mechanical ventilation with deep sedation and analgesia (RASS -4/-5), a pain monitoring strategy guided by pupillometry with standard care based on the BPS. The objective is to evaluate the impact of this strategy on the frequency of pain event detection and on complications associated with opioid use in the intensive care unit

Relationships Among Pupil Responses to Light, Circadian Rhythms, and Sleep

The investigators are studying relationships among eye pathology, pupil responses to light, sleep, circadian rhythms, and hormones in healthy individuals and those with various medical disorders or illnesses. All participants will: * Answer questionnaires about their health * Receive an eye exam, * For one week at home, participants will track their sleep and wake using actigraphy (wrist worn wearable) and an online sleep diary. * Complete a pupillometry session (measuring pupil size in response to different lighting) at MGH Participants may also choose to participate in the following additional procedures in any order: * Within one week of their pupillometry session, an at-home saliva collection under dim light. Saliva melatonin can be analyzed to determine Dim-Light-Melatonin-Onset (DLMO), a marker of circadian timing. * If participants participate in one night saliva collection, a second night of at-home saliva collection with a bright light exposure to calculate melatonin suppression in response to light.

Dynamic Trajectories of Pupillary Light Reflex Parameters and Prognosis in Critically Ill Patients: A Multicenter Prospective Cohort Study

This multicenter prospective observational cohort study aims to investigate the association between early dynamic trajectories of pupillary light reflex parameters and clinical outcomes in critically ill patients admitted to emergency intensive care units. Quantitative pupillometry will be performed during the first 7 days after EICU admission. Constriction velocity will be the primary parameter for trajectory analysis, while dilation velocity, pupil diameter, constriction percentage, maximum constriction velocity, and latency will be analyzed as supplementary parameters. The study will evaluate whether these dynamic pupillary trajectories are associated with discharge outcome and 90-day functional outcome assessed by the Glasgow Outcome Scale-Extended.

Early WAKE-up Predictors After Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest

WAKE-OHCA is a prospective observational substudy of the Danish Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest (DANOHCA) trial, identifier NCT05895838. The aim is to collect early neuromonitoring data to identify key predictors of successful wake-up.

Stress Evaluation and Management Using High Fidelity Simulation in Medical Education

The goal of this interventional study is to collect clinical and neurophysiological information to determine whether high-fidelity simulation can serve as a stress-inducing stimulus in a population of healthy residents (Emergency medicine, Anesthesia and Intensive care medicine, Paediatrics), both male and female, aged between 25 and 40 years. The main questions it aims to answer are: 1. Define in which phase of the simulation the highest level of stress is observed. 2. Determine the level of stress reached after performing a second high-fidelity simulation after a period of time. 3. Identify whether specific brain areas are activated during high-fidelity simulation. Participants will form teams, consisting of three medical trainees from the same specialty training program, that will undergo two high-fidelity simulations based on a clinical scenario relevant to their residency. * During the simulation, automatic pupillometry will be performed on all team members at the four time points. * Additionally, a two-lead ECG will be recorded for all team members at baseline and end of the debriefing * One team member will undergo EEG monitoring throughout the entire simulation. The EEG recordings will be sampled at baseline, during the simulation and end of the debriefing.