Critical Care Reviews Newsletter

Welcome to the 513th 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 Critical Care Reviews Blog started this week, with an exploration of the REST trial and some thoughts as to why the trial failed to conclusively find benefit with the combination of ultra-low tidal volume ventilation supported by extracorporeal CO₂ removal. The trial was published in JAMA at the end of August and initially presented at eCCR21 in January. On Thursday, October 21st, we will be hosting the results of the COVID-STEROID-2 trial, which compares 12mg with 6mg of dexamethasone in patients with severe COVID-19 & hypoxaemia. The preprint has been released, so the results are out, including a non-statistically significant 5% mortality reduction with the 12mg dose. However, the interpretation remains open. Does statistical significance best clinical significance? Join us for an in-depth discussion on how the results of this important trial should be acted upon. Two weeks ago we hosted the results of the VAM-IHCA trial, investigating vasopressin and methylprednisolone for in-hospital cardiac arrest. This week, the follow-up podcast, with chief investigator Lars Andersen, will be out. We'll discuss the comments and questions which were posted on twitter and the livestream chat function after the presentation & publication of the trial.

It was a busy week with the release and publication of a large number of trials, many at the annual ESICM congress. Enjoy the reading!