Critical Care Clinical Research

Summary Science Features

Ongoing clinical studies of our Critical Care Division include:

1. Outcome of patients with prolonged acute respiratory failure requiring mechanical ventilation, including follow-up of survival and quality of life, management and discontinuation of tracheostomy.
   
   
2. Hemodynamic monitoring, including the use of less invasive monitoring techniques such as transthoracic thermodilution, continuous cardiac output, and the use of portable cardiac ultrasound by intensivists.
   
   
3. Quality assurance initiatives in trauma patients, such as cervical spine collars removal and the introduction of bedside percutaneous tracheostomy.
   
   
4. Quality assurance initiatives aimed at improving resources utilization in the SICU, such as a new protocol on laboratory tests ordering, and a survey on family satisfaction with communications with physicians.
   
   
5. Studies of prevention of ventilator associated pneumonia.  Clinical application of a series of experimental studies showing the effect of different patient?s position in the prevention of pneumonia.
   
   
6. Studies of tracheal intubation outside the operating room.  After two observational studies, our group has now started a randomized interventional trial on the effect of different levels of supervision.
   
   
7. Studies on the incidence and significance of neurologic dysfunction in the ICU.  By using a validate instrument to diagnose delirium, the CAM- ICU, we plan to study the effects of testing for the presence of this acute brain dysfunction on the practice of physicians and on the outcome of patients.