Critical Care Reviews Newsletter

Welcome to the 536th Critical Care Reviews Newsletter, bringing you the best critical care research and open access articles from across the medical literature over the past seven days.

The highlights of this week's edition are randomised controlled trials on the anti-GM-CSF monoclonal antibody gimsilumab for COVID-19 pneumonia & APRV in patients with acute respiratory failure due to COVID-19; systematic reviews and meta analyses on awake prone positioning for non-intubated patients with COVID-19-related acute hypoxaemic respiratory failure & the role of acute hypercapnia on mortality and short-term physiology in patients mechanically ventilated for ARDS; and an observational study on a perioperative laboratory test-based prediction model for moderate to severe AKI after cardiac surgery.

There are also guidelines on pain, agitation, delirium, immobility, and sleep disturbance in the intensive care unit & focused assessment with sonography for trauma in children; narrative reviews on brain death & whether prehospital blood transfusion should be adopted for civilian trauma; and commentaries on collider bias & my advice to the NEXT generation; as well as correspondence on the actual benefit of early antibiotics for young patients with sepsis & vitamin C for septic shock. 

If you only have time to read one review article this week, try this one on challenging management dogma where evidence is non-existent, weak or outdated.

Critical Care Reviews Meeting 2022

We announced two panel discussions this week; firstly, a discussion on "the future of funding for clinical trials" between three of the major UK trial funders (Prof Jeremy Farrar from the Wellcome Trust, Prof Lucy Chappell from NIHR, & Prof Patrick Chinnery from the MRC, chaired by Prof Danny McAuley); and secondly, an exploration of "publishing with the top tier journals", featuring Prof Darren Taichmann (Deputy Editor, NEJM), Assoc Prof Christopher Seymour (Associate Editor for Critical Care, JAMA), Dr Liz Wilcox (University of Toronto), Dr Bronwen Connolly (Queen's University Belfast) and Dr Fernando Zampieri (Albert Einstein Hospital, Sao Paulo), chaired by Prof Howard Bauchner, Editor-in-Chief JAMA, 2011 - 2021.

Registration for CCR22, on June 15th to 17th at Titanic Belfast, is open.

Next Livestream

Our next livestream trial results presentation will be the "Step Down" component of the FIRST ABC trial, comparing CPAP with high flow nasal oxygen in recently extubated critically ill children. This is scheduled for Thursday April 7th, at 19:30 UTC+1. The "Step Up" component, comparing CPAP with HFNO in critically ill children with an acute illness requiring non-invasive respiratory support, will be presented at CCR22 in June.