Clinical Research Directory

Respiratory Knowledge Portal Computer and Phone Application to Improve Quality of Mechanical Ventilation by Reducing the Number of Ventilator Associated Events, Injury Created by the Ventilator and Unsafe Setting of Alarms.

Ventilator associated events (VAE) is a quality metric defined by 48 hours of stability followed by 48 hours of escalation of ventilator settings within the ICU. VAE have been associated with poor outcomes and increases the cost of care, yet is not easy to avoid. Operationalizing all the standards of care known to improve outcomes of those requiring mechanical ventilation in the critical care environment requires a comprehensive approach. ICU teams are encouraged to follow best practice protocols to help liberate and prevent VAEs. Yet, compliance with protocols in most ICUs is suboptimal for multiple reasons. With the advent of computerized mechanical ventilators capable of streaming data from breath to breath and biomedical integration systems (BMDI) such as Capsule (UTMB's BMDI system), software systems have been developed to help identify variances in the standard of care. Automation in near real-time ventilator data feedback has been shown to reduce the incidences of VAEs. This quality improvement project will leverage Vyaire's Respiratory Knowledge Portal (RKP) to collect and store meaningful data regarding ventilator-associated events (VAE), alarm policy compliance, ventilator weaning, and lung protective analytics. Goals: 1. To collect quality metrics utilizing RKP from patients requiring mechanical ventilation over a 3-4-month period for a retrospective baseline analysis. 2. Provide the RKP tool to the ICU team to determine if the use of RKP's webportal and Messenger Zebra phone app improves quality of mechanical ventilation and outcomes. 3. To determine a return on investment (ROI) for a software system like RKP.

Wise Choices in the Intensive Care Unit

Aim: to evaluate if the Choosing Wisely campaign can be introduced without harming critically ill patients. Background: Each year, around 45,000 patients are admitted to Sweden's 81 ICUs (intensive care units), costing 6-7 billion SEK (6% of total healthcare expenditure). The high costs of health care are partly attributable to overuse of diagnostic tests. Up to 30% of these tests lead to treatments that provide no benefit for patients, some of them may even be harmful(1-3). To improve quality of care while combating this problem of cost, the American Board of Internal Medicine Foundation developed the Choosing Wisely Campaign, tasking professional societies to develop lists of top five medical services patients and physicians should question. Patients in the ICU, can especially benefit from this paradigm shift. They are subjected to multiple testing on a daily - sometimes hourly - basis, therefore this field of medicine responded to the campaign quickly. Two sets of top-five-lists of tests and interventions that can be questioned have been published(4 5). In multiple countries, including Sweden, the Choosing Wisely campaign is gathering traction among critical care physicians and is on the verge of being introduced. It is both common-sensical and will save money, so health care leaders are positive. However, the investigators have an opportunity, and a duty, to assess the evidence; can the Choosing Wisely campaign be introduced without harming ICU patients? The present study thus aims to evaluate the introduction of the Choosing Wisely campaign in the context of the ICU. Is this change of care strategy associated with changes in 30-day-mortality? Secondary outcomes include ICU length of stay, use of non-invasive- or invasive mechanical ventilation and continuous renal replacement therapy. This is a registry-based cluster randomized controlled study (R-RCT), targeting Swedish ICU's across multiple regions. Primary and secondary outcomes will be retrieved from the Swedish Intensive care Register (SIR), making ICU participation easier and less costly.

The Role of Oxygen Reserve Index (ORi) in Apneic Ventilation

Background: The Oxygen Reserve Index (ORI) is a non-invasive parameter utilizing multi-wavelength pulse co-oximetry. ORI can provide early warnings of deteriorating oxygenation before changes are reflected in SpO₂ levels. This study aimed to investigate the feasibility of non-ventilated intubation in patients undergoing cholecystectomy as a means to achieve safe intubation without nasogastric tube placement, with reduced trauma and cost, and improved time efficiency.

ADHERE-LPV Advancing Delivery of High-Quality Evidence-Based Respiratory Efforts in Lung-Protective Ventilation

This study is a cluster randomized trial across 10 hospitals, stratified by hospital size (hospitals with greater than 100 mechanically ventilated patients a year will be classified as large, while those with 100 or fewer will be classified as small). Randomization will occur at the hospital level, ensuring an even distribution of large and small hospitals between study arms. Hospitals assigned to the intervention group will implement an EHR-based strategy designed to enhance adherence to lung-protective ventilation (LPV) for a 9-month intervention period, after which the strategy will be rolled out to all hospitals. The intervention focuses on modifying the ventilator order within the Electronic Health Record (EHR) to encourage default settings aligned with LPV principles. This study design allows for comparison of patient outcomes before and after implementation within each hospital while also enabling simultaneous comparisons between hospitals that have and have not yet received the intervention. The cluster randomization approach is necessary, given the order is controlled at the hospital level.

Effects of Different Anesthesia Machine Modalities on Bariatric Surgery Patients: a Prospective Randomized Controlled Study

The goal of this clinical trial is to explore the clinical significance and value of the PRVC ventilation mode in Bariatric Surgery Patients. The main questions it aims to answer are： * Do different ventilation patterns affect intracranial pressure and partial pressure of carbon dioxide in bariatric surgery patients? * Does PRVC mode reduce intracranial pressure and partial pressure of carbon dioxide in bariatric surgery patients? * Whether intracranial pressure can be quickly measured by monitoring a patient's optic nerve sheath diameter (ONSD)？ Researchers randomized bariatric surgery patients into PC, VC, and PRVC groups for comparison, looking at breathing mechanics, PaCO2, and ICP. Participants will: * take PC mode ventilation, VC mode ventilation, and PRVC mode ventilation * monitor Respiratory mechanics, PaCO2, and ONSD

Electrical Impedance Tomography (EIT) Monitoring of Regional Ventilation During Pediatric Laparoscopy

The goal of this prospective, observational study is to describe EIT measurements at different time points during the perioperative period in healthy children undergoing laparoscopic surgery. The objective is to evaluate the impact of general anesthesia and laparoscopy on regional pulmonary ventilation visualized at EIT during the perioperative period.