Clinical Research Directory

GT Metabolic Magnet System in Adults With Gastrointestinal Disorders

Evaluate the performance and safety of the GT Metabolic Magnet System for the creation of side-to-side compression anastomosis in the stomach and/or small bowel in conditions requiring an anastomosis as part of the underlying clinical treatment.

A Study of Intravenous Acetaminophen for Small Bowel Obstruction

The purpose of this study is to compare IV Acetaminophen for pain control to the usual care with opioids in patients admitted for small bowel obstruction.

Contribution of Point of Care Ultrasound by the Emergency Physician to Rule Out the Small Bowel Obstruction: a Diagnostic, Multicenter Study

Small Bowel Obstruction (SBO) is a frequent pathology in the emergency department (ED). Diagnosis is currently based on abdominal CT scan (CT). Moreover, CT is warranted to determine the therapeutic strategy in patients with SBO which could include medical treatment; surgical intervention or both. However, CT is associated with drawbacks such as radiation exposure, increased cost and ED length-of-stay. In a prospective observational study, a SBO was excluded by CT in 45% \[95%CI: 37-53\] of patients. There is, thus, a need for improving the appropriateness of CT-scan for suspected SBO. A recent meta-analysis showed that Point of care ultrasound (POCUS) had a good diagnostic accuracy (sensitivity 83% \[95%CI 71.7%-90.4%\]), specificity 93% \[95%CI 55.3%-99.3%\]). Another meta-analysis found rather similar results (sensitivity 83% \[(95% CI 89.0% to 94.7%\], specificity 96,6% \[95% CI 88.4% to 99.1%\]). In order to improve the negative predictive value of POCUS for its implementation as a rule-out strategy, CHU of Nantes emergency unit studied the combination of POCUS with Gestalt pre-test probability of SBO determined by the emergency physician. This SBO probability classified the patients as low, moderate or high risk of SBO. In patients with low or moderate Gestalt probability, CHU of Nantes emergency unit found that this combined strategy had a sensitivity of 100% \[95% CI: 88-100\] and NPV 100% \[92-100%\]. By (i) focusing on patients with a low or moderate Gestalt clinical probability and (ii) increasing the number of patients included, CHU of Nantes emergency unit intends to demonstrate that POCUS is able to exclude SBO in this population. This would avoid unnecessary CT and thus lower costs, ED length-of-stay and hospital radiologists workload. A POCUS will be performed followed by a CT (gold standard). The main objective will be the ability of POCUS to rule-out SBO in patients with low or moderate Gestalt clinical probability.

The Effect of Nasogastric Tube Placement on Complications in Patients With Small Bowel Obstruction - the SBO-TUBE Randomized Controlled Trial

Background: Small bowel obstruction (SBO) is a surgical emergency where the normal continuous bowel movements are hindered and approximately 8000-9000 patients visit the emergency department every year in Sweden due to SBO. A minority of these have evidence of intestinal injury, warranting emergency surgery, while the majority (70-90%) will have an initial plan for non-operative management with a nasogastric tube (NGT), placed to alleviate gastric pressure, reduce pain and prevent complications like aspiration pneumonia. The effectiveness of NGT in patients with SBO to prevent complications is unclear, with current data from observational data indicating increased risk of pneumonia in patients treated with NGT. Objective: To assess whether deferring the placement of a NGT in subjects with small bowel obstruction and planned for non-operative management leads to lower rates of respiratory complication compared to placing an NGT. Methods: This will be a randomized, controlled, open-label, multicenter study of patients with SBO and an initial plan for non-operative management. Patients will be randomized in a 1:1 ratio to not receive an NGT (intervention) or receive an NGT (control) and monitored regularly until the SBO resolves spontaneously or through surgery, whichever comes first. The primary outcome will be a composite of pulmonary complications and treatment in a high dependency unit, analyzed as a superiority study with an intention-to-treat framework with secondary per-protocol and non-inferiority analysis. We plan to recruit 1000 patients. Secondary analysis includes health-economy, qualitative interviews, and long term (1 year) follow up. Discussion: The current management of NGT in SBO is based on clinical and guideline-based recommendations with limited supporting data. Available data, albeit observational with risk for selection bias, indicates increased risk of complications. This equipoise warrants further investigation to understand the true benefit of NGT in SBO. This study will provide high quality evidence of the ability of a NGT to prevent complications in SBO through its randomized, prospective design

The Utility of Treatment With Nasogastric Tube Placement for Small Bowel Obstruction

Small bowel obstruction (SBO) occurs when the normal movements of the small bowel is obstructed, most commonly due to adhesion related to previous abdominal surgery. This may cause strangulation of the small bowel with reduced blood flow which is a surgical emergency requiring prompt treatment in the operating room. If there are no signs of strangulation or ischemia of the bowel at the time of diagnosis, international guidelines recommend initial treatment with intravenous fluids and nasogastric tube placement. However, there is emerging debate regarding non-selective treatment with nasogastric tube placement in patients with SBO. This management started around 1930 as a means to reduce pain in patients with SBO, in conjunction with other additions to management, like intravenous fluids. However the effect and utility of routine nasogastric tube placement have not been prospectively evaluated. There are a total of three retrospective observational studies in the past decade with a total of 759 patients where 292 (36%) were managed without a nasogastric tube. There was no difference in the rates of conservative treatment failure (requiring surgery), complications (vomiting, pneumonia) or mortality between patients receiving a nasogastric tube and those who didn't. However, the retrospective design of these studies limits their validity. Furthermore, nasogastric tube placement has been shown to be one of the more painful interventions patients may experience in-hospital. This calls into question the patient benefit of routine nasogastric tube placement in patients with SBO and further studies are needed to discern the utility of this intervention. Definitive treatment for SBO is surgical adhesiolysis but there is debate regarding the timing of surgery, particularly in older adults. A large proportion of patients may be managed conservatively with oral contrast and repeated radiological evaluation and the obstruction will resolve in many patients within 24 to 48 hours. This timeframe is dependent on factors related to the disease itself as well as patient related factors like previous surgery and comorbidities. Older patients are at high risk for complications but current available data is insufficient to inform practice in this population. Frailty, a state of increased vulnerability and susceptibility to adverse events, has been shown to be an independent prognosticator in older adults in the Emergency Department(ED) and suggested as a potential measure to risk stratify older adults with SBO. However to the authors knowledge there is no available data on frailty in older adults with SBO and only one prospective observational trial looking at older adults with SBO. Despite SBO being one of the most common surgical emergencies in older adults. To investigate the potential benefit of nasogastric tube placement in patients with SBO and the ability of frailty to prognosticate outcomes in older adults better evidence is needed.

Water-Soluble Contrast Induced Intestinal Stimulation for the Treatment of Small Bowel Obstruction: A Feasibility Study

Small bowel obstruction (SBO) is common yet, how to best manage it remains unknown. One approach is to administer water soluble oral contrast (WSC) and the obtain x-rays to determine how well the bowel is functioning. WSC may help resolve SBO by stimulating the bowel by itself. The intent of this study is to determine if the x-ray component of this therapeutic approach is necessary.

A Procalcitonin-based Algorithm in Adhesion-related Small Bowel Obstruction

Adhesion-related small bowel obstruction is a common digestive emergency that can be managed either conservatively or surgically. However, the choice between these two approaches can be difficult due to the absence of specific signs. The objective of this study is to evaluate the clinical impact of a procalcitonin-based algorithm.

Predicting NOM Failure in Bowel Obstruction

"This study aims to collect data on patients with small bowel obstruction (SBO) admitted to hospitals in France and Italy from May 2022 to October 2024 to develop a deep convolutional neural network (DCNN) model. This model will analyze anonymized CT scans to assess the effectiveness of non-operative management (NOM) for SBO, supporting decisions on surgical intervention. Eligible patients are those diagnosed with SBO due to abdominal adhesions who initially received NOM for at least 24 hours. Patients with other SBO causes, early surgery within 24 hours, or those without a CT scan diagnosis are excluded. Data collection spans hospitals in Antibes, Nice, Milan, and Vimercate, targeting consecutive SBO cases with adhesive etiology. To perform an external validation of the DCNN, data will also be retrospectively collected from patients admitted to the Antibes hospital between May 2021 and April 2022 with adhesive SBO. This validation set includes patients who underwent NOM successfully and those who needed surgery after NOM failure. The DCNN model will be applied to anonymized, non-contrast and contrast-enhanced portal-phase CT scans of these patients, with researchers blinded to each patient's NOM outcome to prevent bias. The model's performance will then be evaluated using accuracy metrics consistent with those used in initial model testing, ensuring the reliability of results when applied to external cases. NOM, after adhesive SBO diagnosis via clinical exams, blood tests, and CT scans, includes fasting, analgesics, antiemetics, and fluids as per current guidelines, without necessarily using nasogastric tubes or contrast agents. Patients are re-evaluated after 24 hours to determine whether NOM should continue or if surgery is necessary. NOM is deemed effective if patients experience symptom resolution, stool passage, and no recurrence within 90 days. NOM failure is defined by the need for laparoscopic or laparotomic surgery, based on symptoms' persistence, worsening, or radiological indicators of blockage despite adequate NOM. Data collection, registered with the French National Committee for Data Protection, includes variables like age, sex, medical history, symptoms, blood tests, CT-scan findings, NOM details, and surgical information. Radiological data, including Digital Imaging and Communication in Medicine (DICOM) files of CT scans, will be anonymized and converted to the Neuroimaging Informatics Technology Initiative (NIfTI) format for secure storage and analysis. The NIfTI data files will be randomly split into training and test datasets in an 80%-20% ratio, processed separately for non-contrast and contrast-enhanced CT scans. Data augmentation, including random rotation, flipping, zooming, translation, and noise addition, will be applied to improve model accuracy and reduce overfitting. Different DCNN models will be trained and tested and furtherly undergo external validation to produce a tool capable of predicting NOM failure and need for surgery in patients with adhesive SBO."

Study About Contrast Media

Patients hospitalized with adhesive small bowel obstruction (SBO) are randomized to 2 study groups at admission after signing an informed consent form. Water-soluble contrast media (CM) will be administered after 4 or after 24 hours of nasogastric- tube decompression.

Early Surgery Versus 3 Days Non-surgical Management in Acute Small Bowel Obstruction (SURGI-BOW)

For uncomplicated acute small bowel obstruction (aSBO), the "Bologna guidelines" recommend non-surgical management of 72 hours before considering surgery. This treatment is based on the placement of a nasogastric tube and the correction of hydro-electrolyte disorders. Non-surgical management is only effective in 60 to 70% and surgery is therefore necessary in 30 to 40% of cases after medical treatment for at least 3 days. This therefore leads to an increase in the length of hospital stay. Some authors also point out that postponing surgery for 3 days would aggravate the morbidity and mortality of surgery. Indeed, aSBO surgery has a complication rate of 10-40% and a mortality of up to 4%. There is a lack of studies evaluating what is the best management strategy for aSBO, especially with regard to the duration of medical treatment. Many recent studies plead in favor of early surgical treatment (\<24 hours) which would reduce the morbidity and mortality rate of surgery but also the overall cost of treatment by reducing the length of stay. This paradigm shift is linked to the improvement of anesthetic and intensive care management over the last few years, but also to the advent of laparoscopy in emergency surgery. Indeed, laparoscopy could reduce the duration of hospitalization but also the operative morbidity and mortality. However, this surgical approach is not feasible in all situations and the conversion rate is reported in 30 to 76% of cases. One of the factors favoring the feasibility of the laparoscopic approach is the performance of early surgery. Another parameter favoring the feasibility of the laparoscopic approach is the aSBO mechanism: an aSBO on flange (SBA) is more likely to be treated effectively by laparoscopic than an aSBO on multiple adhesions (MA). In the literature, there is little to differentiate SBAs from MAs. Advances in CT scans have made it possible to describe the signs associated with the SBA mechanism and then to propose a score making it possible to predict the SBA mechanism with good performance (sensitivity 67.6%, specificity 84.6%). This score not only has the advantage of predicting the mechanism of the occlusion but it also makes it possible to predict the failure of non-surgical treatment if the score is ≥5.

Low-osmolar Water Soluble Contrast Agent in Management of Adhesive Small Bowel Obstruction

Adhesive small bowel obstruction (ASBO) is a condition that is commonly found in patients with history of abdominal surgery. The management for such condition can be controversial. In terms of conservative treatment, recent studies have shown conflicting outcomes on whether water soluble contrast would provide benefit in reducing number of patients needed for surgery. In addition, there are a limited number of literature that investigates the role of low-osmolar contrast in reducing operative need in patients diagnosed with ASBO. The objective of this study is to compare the operative rate of patient diagnosed with ASBO between patients who were treated with low osmolar water soluble contrast (Iohexol) and patients who were treated traditionally.