Surgery Clinical Trials

The study is enrolling adults who are scheduled for either inpatient or outpatient elective surgical procedures at The University of Chicago. At pre-operative visits, patients will be consented and a blood sample will be obtained for preemptive genotyping across a panel of actionable germline variants predicting drug response or toxicity risk. Genotyping results will be delivered to participating providers as patient-specific drug-gene clinical decision support summaries using a secured Web portal, the Genomic Prescribing System (GPS). Participating anesthesiologists and critical care and pain management physicians and associated providers from the Department of Anesthesia and Critical Care at the University of Chicago will be invited to receive results for their participating patients. There will be an initial 6- month "run-in" period of the study comprised of approximately 100 enrolled adults in which all patients will have pharmacogenomic results made available to providers. The run-in period will allow for process refinement and GPS delivery to be examined and optimized prior to the randomized phase After the initial run-in period, patients will be randomized to one of two arms - in the pharmacogenomic arm, providers will have access to GPS and pharmacogenomic information, whereas in the control arm, providers will not have access to GPS and patient-specific pharmacogenomic information (current standard of care). Read Less

This is a research study to determine if a particular method of providing nutrition improves the clinical outcomes of patients in the intensive care unit (ICU) who have undergone abdominal surgery and would require nutrition delivered via the bloodstream (called total parenteral nutrition or TPN). The nutrition method we are testing is a structured nutrition delivery plan that involves tube feeding, oral nutrition supplements, and the use of a device (called an indirect calorimeter or IC) to measure calorie needs. This study will also use two devices to measure fat and muscle mass to examine changes during hospitalization. Subjects will be followed throughout hospitalization where nutrition status and fat and muscle mass will be closely monitored. Study activities will begin within 72 hours of a patient's abdominal surgery. TPN (total parenteral nutrition, a method of feeding that bypasses the usual process of eating and digestion) will be started, a non-invasive method of assessing calorie needs (indirect calorimetry (IC)) will be started, a urine sample will be collected to help assist in protein needs, and fat/muscle mass will be measured using bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA), and an ultrasound. This is a minimal risk study and all products/devices used are non-invasive and FDA-approved. Indirect calorimetry and urine sample collection will be conducted every 3 days during the stay in the Intensive Care Unit - ICU, then every 5 days until hospital discharge. BIA and muscle ultrasound will be conducted every 7 days during ICU stay, then every 14 days until hospital discharge. Read Less

Our study aims to compare postoperative outcomes, postoperative pain and postoperative quality of lives in patients who receive the standard sternal precautions to those in patients who received self-managed sternal precautions following sternotomy for cardiac surgeries. The purpose of the study is to see if self-managed sternal precautions following sternotomy for cardiac surgeries lead to better quality of lives while maintaining same postoperative pain and rate of postoperative adverse events than standard sternal precautions. Postoperative pain and postoperative quality of lives will be assessed by phone call surveys. Postoperative outcomes will be measured by following the patients for up to a year using electronic medical record. Read Less

The study aims at comparing two different approaches for soft tissue augmentation at implants lacking keratinized and adherent mucosa width: the free gingival graft (FGG) vs the Buccal Strip Graft in combination with a xenogeneic collagen matrix (BSG + CM) Read Less

The goal of this pilot study is to learn if a class and hands-on-practice of ergonomic body positions - or specific ways to move the body while working to prevent injury - is valuable to training obstetrics and gynecology doctors. The main questions the study team aims to answer are: * Will these lessons successfully teach the participants how to move bodies at work in a way that will prevent injury? * Will the participants feel that learning and practicing such lessons helps to avoid injury while at work? Researchers will compare training obstetrics and gynecology doctors that attend a class on ergonomics and have guided hands-on-practice of ergonomic body positions with training obstetrics and gynecology doctors that attend the class only to see if the first group learns and remembers how to move their bodies safely while working. All participants will attend a class that teaches basic ergonomic lessons before they are divided into two groups. Group 1 will practice common surgery skills on a model while being videotaped by an artificial intelligence application. The application will make a report on unsafe positions a participant does while practicing surgical skills. The Group 1 participant will then go over the report with one of the study supervisors to talk about ways that the participant can move safely while practicing the skills. The participant will then practice the skills one more time while being videotaped. The study supervisors will then compare the two reports to see if the participant improved. Group 2 will also practice common surgery skills on a model while being videotaped. Group 2 participants will not get to see the report that the application generates or speak with the study supervisors about ways to move safely while practicing the skills. There will be a follow up after two months to see if participants remembered what was learned during the class and during the hands-on practice lesson. All participants will again be videotaped. The study supervisors will compare the videos and reports from the last class to the most recent ones to see if the participants learned and remember how to move safely while working. Participants in both groups will take a quiz about the lessons learned in the class before and after the class to determine what had been learned from the lesson. A survey about how useful and helpful the class was and hands-on practice sessions were will also be completed. Read Less

This is a prospective, non-randomized, clinical trial of discarded liver transplants that have received normothermic machine perfusion (NMP), compared with standard cold preservation liver transplants. The discarded livers rejected by all other centers and meeting pre-NMP eligibility criteria will receive NMP using the OrganOx® metra device. The NMP-treated liver that meets the viability criteria will be transplanted to patients who are eligible and consented to the study. Liver transplant outcomes will be ascertained during 12 months post-transplantation. The results of the trial will be compared with those of contemporary comparison groups of patients who received the standard criteria donor liver transplantation. Read Less

The primary aim of this study is to measure pain and psychosocial patient reported outcomes, objective functionality, and actual daily at home opioid usage in orthopedic patients. The study's goal following the data collection is to predict which patients are at high risk for chronic opioid use. Read Less

This study will compare the effectiveness of two pain management pathways (standard vs. enriched) for patients undergoing lumbar spine surgery in the Military Health System (MHS). Effectiveness will be based on post-surgery patient-centered outcomes and extent of opioid use. The study design is a 2-arm, parallel group, individual-randomized trial. Read Less

The purpose of this study is to examine if patients have a lower anxiety level during wide awake hand surgery while listening to their choice of music vs standardized relaxation music. Patients who are planning to undergo wide awake (local anesthetic only hand surgery) and agree to participate will be randomized to either a music intervention where they listen to their choice of music genre or standardized relaxation music during their time in the operating room. 170 participants will be enrolled and can expect to be on study for 2 weeks. Read Less

The purpose of this study is to find out how many participants are interested in a surgical preventive procedure after watching an educational video. Before and after watching the video, participants will complete questionnaires in the clinic. Read Less

This trial aims to demonstrate that the Neuralert Monitoring System will detect strokes before they would be identified by current standard of care. Each patient will be monitored for up to five days, depending on device connectivity or battery duration. Each monitoring session will consist of wearing a Neuralert device on each arm. For this pilot trial, we are interested in learning about Wi-Fi connectivity, successful data transmission, integration into clinical workflow, usability and tolerability. Read Less

Vaginal Natural Orifice Transluminal Endoscopic Surgery (vNOTES) is an emerging field in minimally invasive surgery. International consensus-based statement was recently published to help guide the basis for adopting vNOTES into clinical practice, including regarding patient selection. It was agreed that women with potential adhesions are not appropriate candidates for vNOTES approach including women with suspected adhesions due to history of severe pelvic inflammatory disease (PID) or endometriosis. However, as some pelvic infections might be asymptomatic, pre-operation imaging might be beneficial to complete improved selection of patients. Moreover, women with previous severe PID or endometriosis might still have favorable pelvic to perform the vNOTES approach. Therefore, we aim to compare pre-operation ultrasound evaluation to operative characteristics and outcomes in women undergoing VNOTES approach surgery. Read Less