Critical Illness Clinical Trials

CHAOS is based on the investigator's new and exciting results from pre-clinical and large longitudinal multi-center observational clinical studies of critically ill patients and asymptomatic community-based adults with little or no advanced disease. By integrating approaches from the physical, biological, computational, statistical and clinical sciences, this observational study will test the hypothesis that early diagnosis of subclinical signatures of critical illness encoded within physiological signals complements conventional clinical predictors by providing unique prognostic insight. The primary goal is to reduce mortality, morbidity and complications by early identification of individuals with brewing subclinical critical illness and adverse events before overt clinical presentation (e.g., cardiac arrest, arrhythmias, hemorrhage, respiratory failure, circulatory collapse). This will provide the necessary lead time for healthcare providers to deliver early, more effective and/or preventive therapies. Through innovative approaches, CHAOS also meets the challenge of medical errors to reduce missed diagnosis, misdiagnosis, preventable harm and variability in provider adherence to best practice guidelines. The goal is to validate predictive algorithms and identify subclinical signatures of illness, ranging from asymptomatic adults in the community to very sick patients in the hospital. The overall goal is to make healthcare more precise, effective, efficient, safe and timely while reducing costs, preventable harms and adverse events. Read Less

This study is designed to help decide how much intravenous (IV) fluid should be given to pediatric trauma patients. No standard currently exists for managing fluids in critically ill pediatric trauma patients, and many fluid strategies are now in practice. For decades, trauma patients got high volumes of IV fluid. Recent studies in adults show that patients actually do better by giving less fluid. The investigators do not know if this is true in children and this study is designed to answer that question and provide guidelines for IV fluid management in children after trauma. Read Less

Elucidate the influence of intense light therapy pretreatment in patients undergoing cardiac surgery. We hypothesize that intense light exposure is associated with the peripheral stabilization of Per2 in human buccal swabs and plasma samples before surgery and with a decrease of Troponin I levels after surgery. In addition, we hypothesize that light therapy leads to Per2 dependent metabolic optimization in the human cardiac tissue. Therefore, a small piece of human heart tissue from the right atrium will be collected during cardiac cannulation, which will be otherwise discarded. Critical illness (being in the intensive care unit) results in circadian malfunction and vessels not working. Vessel function is controlled by the body's circadian clock. Intense light boosts the circadian clock and the vessel function in animal studies. Vessels not working well in critical ill patients results in a myriad of severe diseases (delirium, stroke, heart attack, organ damage etc). Thus we will test if intense light can be used to boost the circadian clock and the associated vessel function in critical ill patients. Read Less

Randomized controlled trial to establish evidence on which to base timing of enteral feeding after bedside PEG placement in ventilated Trauma and Surgical ICU patients. Read Less

Previous research has shown that most parents would allow their child's leftover blood to be included in a de-identified biorepository using opt-out consent in an outpatient setting. In a pilot study to evaluate Pediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) parents' preferences and comprehension of a written opt-in consent to include their child's sample in a biorepository, the investigators showed 19% of parents did not agree to participate in the Biobank, more than the 8.7% reported in other settings. Parent comprehension varied. and the investigators also noted differential enrollment by sociodemographic factors. Critically ill children and their parents are vulnerable; seeking consent for non-therapeutic research in critical care requires special consideration. Therefore, the goal of this study is to evaluate whether the addition of a stakeholder influenced (parent, clinical research professionals) video aided consent will improve comprehension and rates of enrollment across diverse groups in this high intensity setting. Read Less