Clinical Research Directory

Australasian Resuscitation In Sepsis Evaluation: FLUid or Vasopressors In Emergency Department Sepsis

This multicentre, randomised controlled trial will enrol 1000 patients presenting with septic shock to the emergency department (ED) of participating hospitals in Australia and New Zealand. Participants will receive haemodynamic resuscitation with either a restricted fluids and early vasopressor regimen or a larger initial IV fluid volume with later introduction of vasopressors if required. Clinical care including the type of resuscitation fluid and vasopressor agent, will otherwise be in accordance with accepted standard care and according to clinician discretion. The study intervention will be delivered for at least 6 hours and up to 24 hours post-randomisation. Participants will be followed for up to 12 months and outcomes analysed on an intention-to-treat basis.

Early Intravenous Hydrocortisone in Sepsis

The goal of this clinical trial is to compare two timings of steroid treatment in patients with severe infection who develop low blood pressure. The main question it aims to answer is: • Which timing strategy is better between starting steroid treatment very early in the course of severe infection, or waiting until the patient does not respond to medicine that raises blood pressure according to the current guidelines? Participants will receive either early steroid treatment or placebo right after they develop low blood pressure from infection. Both participants and treating doctors will not know which treatment participants received. When blood pressure goal is not reached after a moderate dose of drugs that raise blood pressure, an open-label steroid treatment will be given to participants as indicated in the current guidelines.

Early Severe Illness TrAnslational BioLogy InformaticS in Humans

Advanced stages of the response to life-threatening infection, severe trauma, or other physiological insults often lead to exhaustion of the homeostatic mechanisms that sustain normal blood pressure and oxygenation. These syndromic presentations often meet the diagnostic criteria of sepsis and/or the acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), the two most common syndromes encountered in the intensive care unit (ICU). Although critical illness syndromes, such as sepsis and ARDS, have separate clinical definitions, they often overlap clinically and share several common injury mechanisms. Moreover, there are no specific therapies for critically ill patients, and as a consequence, approximately 1 in 4 patients admitted to the ICU will not survive. The purpose of this observational study is to identify early patient biologic factors that are present at the time of ICU admission that will help diagnose critical illness syndromes earlier, identify who could benefit most from specific therapies, and enable the discovery of new treatments for syndromes such as sepsis and ARDS.

Early Initiated Vasopressor Therapy in the Emergency Department

The goal of this pragmatic, multi-center, superiority, randomized clinical trial is to compare early treatment with peripheral (through a vein) infused noradrenaline (a natural hormone that increases blood pressure) with fluid only therapy in patients with hypotensive and shock in the Danish and Swedish Emergency Departments (ED). The main questions it aims to answer are: If early initiated noradrenaline in non-bleeding hypotensive patients presenting in the ED can * Improve time to shock control. * Reduce the need for ICU admittance. * Decrease mortality. Participants will be included by the clinical staff and treated urgently with either noradrenaline or usual treatment during their Emergency Department stay. After completion of the treatment in the Emergency Department, patient data will be extracted from the bed-side measurements, electronic health records and national registers. Patients will be contacted by the research staff 1 year after study inclusion to answer brief questions about their daily physical function and ability to care for themselves. Researchers will compare with patients receiving fluid therapy only, as this is the usual standard of care in Danish and Swedish Emergency Departments.

"Mini Fluid Challenge Assessment: a Comparison Among Three Hemodynamic Tools"

The mini fluid challenge (mini\_FC) is a functional hemodynamic test which has been used in different clinical contexts to assess fluid responsiveness. This test is performed by rapidly injecting a small aliquot of fluid (100 ml over 1 minute), which is followed by the infusion of the residual aliquot of fluid. Since the threshold of the mini\_FC identified by the literature is rather small (5% of stroke volume (SV) increase after the 100 ml bolus to discriminate between responder and non-responder), it is crucial that the hemodynamic tool assessing this change could be reliable. Moreover, the SV changes with inspiratory/expiratory movements and the increase after the mini\_FC should also consider the physiological fluctuations of the SV. In the literature this test has been performed by means of tolls with different least significant change of the SV. The least significant change (LSC) represents the smallest difference between successive measurements of SV that can be considered to be a real change and not attributable to chance. The purpose of this study is to assess the agreement among MOSTCARE system (4.5\& of SV LSC described in the literature) and the echocardiography (about 10% of SV LSC described in the literature) with the PICCO system (about 1% of SV LSC described in the literature - considered the gold standard) in discriminating fluid responsiveness after a mini\_FC

Management of Shock in Children With SAM or Severe Underweight and Diarrhea

Diarrhea is one of the leading causes of under-five childhood mortality and accounts for 8% of 5.4 million global under-5 deaths. The coexistence of sepsis and hypovolemic shock in children with severe acute malnutrition (SAM) having diarrhea is common. At Dhaka hospital of icddr,b, the death rate is as high as 40% and 69% in children with severe sepsis and septic shock respectively with co-morbidities such as severe malnutrition. The conventional management of SAM children with features of severe sepsis recommended by WHO includes administration of boluses of isotonic saline followed by blood transfusion in unresponsive cases with septic shock; whereas the Surviving Sepsis Campaign (SSC) guideline recommends vasoactive support. To date, no study has evaluated systematically the effects of inotrope(s) and vasopressor or blood transfusion in children with dehydrating diarrhea (for example, in cholera) and SAM having shock and unresponsive to WHO standard fluid therapy. This randomized trial will generate evidence whether inotrope and vasopressor or blood transfusion should be selected for severely malnourished children having hypotensive shock and who failed to respond to WHO standard fluid bolus.

Sevoflurane Sedation in Patients With Septic Shock

Recent in vivo studies from others as well as the investigators group demonstrated that volatile anesthetics immunomodulate sepsis and improve outcome. Also, several clinical trials have convincingly shown that application of a volatile anesthetic provides protection in patients undergoing major surgery. Patients with sepsis are intubated and ventilated and therefore need sedation. So far, most ICU centers use intravenously applied sedatives in these patients. In the proposed study, we will switch sedation from an intravenous to a volatile anesthetic for a short period of time to explore if sepsis markers improve within the following 120 hours upon sevoflurane conditioning.

Hemodynamic Phenotype-Based,Capillary Refill Time-Targeted Resuscitation In Early Septic Shock:ANDROMEDA-SHOCK-2

Over-resuscitation including fluid overload has been associated with increased morbidity (prolonged duration of organ failure) and mortality in septic shock. "One-size-fits-all" resuscitation strategies may increase septic shock mortality. However, clinical studies on individualized resuscitation are lacking. Hemodynamic phenotyping may allow to individualize septic shock resuscitation. The ANDROMEDA-SHOCK trial found that a simple clinical and bedside CRT-targeted resuscitation reduces organ dysfunction and 28-day mortality in septic shock. The current study will examine the hypothesis that a CRT-targeted resuscitation based on hemodynamic phenotyping considering within an decision tree usual bedside clinical parameters such as pulse pressure, diastolic blood pressure, fluid responsiveness and cardiac performance can further decrease mortality in septic shock as compared to usual care.

Pituitary Function After Recovery From Septic Shock Among ICU Survivors

Prolonged circulatory shock is associated with marked disturbances in vascular supply to the brain, and endothelial dysfunction which can lead to disseminated intravascular coagulation and microvascular thrombosis. Pituitary dysfunction is documented following post-partum hemorrhage, traumatic brain injury and subarachnoid hemorrhage, which also affect blood flow to the pituitary. However, there are no studies assessing pituitary function in the aftermath of recovery from shock. This will be a prospective observational study of patients admitted in Critical Care Medicine (CCM) ICU who have recovered from prolonged septic shock (Lasting for a period of \> 24 hours). Blood samples of the participants will be estimated at the time of discharge from the ICU and at 6 months post discharge. Investigators will estimate fasting serum cortisol, TSH, Free T4, Testosterone (in males), Oestrogen (in females), LH, FSH, Prolactin, IGF-1 and plasma ACTH in all participants at both time points (at the time of ICU discharge and at 6-months follow-up). Participants who have borderline serum cortisol values (138-400 nmol/l) will be subjected to 250ug ACTH stimulation test. Expected outcome of the proposed study is to know proportion of patients having pituitary hormone axis dysfunction. Investigators will also look for pituitary dysfunction persist or revert, or there are new onset dysfunction at 6 month follow up. This would have major implications in the follow up and management of ICU survivors.

Significance of Disseminated Intravascular Coagulation Score in Mortality for Children With Shock

Evaluates whether the DIC score, as defined according to the International Society of Thrombosis and Hemostasis guidelines is associated with mortality in Children with shock and DIC

Study of Progression of Community Acquired Pneumonia in the Hospital in Patients With More Severe Preexisting Diseases and Immunosuppression

Pneumonia is a common infectious disease of the lung, often requiring treatment in the hospital. Clinical scoring systems are available, identifying patients not requiring hospitalization. However, the course of disease of patients in the hospital remains hard to predict. While most patients will recover quickly, some will, despite appropriate treatment, develop a severe course leading to sepsis and systemic responses resulting in organ dysfunction. The PROGRESS consortium aims to identify clinical, genetic, and other molecular markers and combinations there of predicting a severe course of pneumonia in the hospital. Such predictors will, for instance, support decisions on earlier transfer of patients to intensive care and thus improving outcome. PROGRESS-COMORB aims to extend findings from the previous PROGRESS study to patients with more severe preexisting conditions and immunosuppression.

Intravenous Methylene Blue for Treating Refractory Neonatal Septic Shock

Preterm infants (born at less than 37 weeks of pregnancy) sometimes develop a serious blood infection leading to low blood pressure, which does not respond to saline or to the standard medicines for increasing blood pressure, such as dopamine and epinephrine. The goal of this research study is to compare the effect of giving an injectable medicine called Methylene blue (MB) versus not giving MB to such preterm infants who are unresponsive to standard treatment. The main questions that this study aims to answer is: 1. Whether MB treatment reduces death to any cause as compared to no MB treatment. 2. Whether treatment with MB reduces the time to achieve normal blood pressure 3. Whether treatment with MB reduces the time to stoppage of all blood pressure medications, steroids and normal saline. 4. Whether treatment with MB improves heart function as measured by echocardiography at 24 and 48 hours.

Efficacy, Safety and Tolerability of Nangibotide in Patients With Septic Shock

This is a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled dose-selection study in which two doses of nangibotide are tested versus placebo.