5 Clinical Trials for Various Conditions
Background: While the intensive care of patients with life-threatening brain illnesses has advanced tremendously, a large number of therapies are still without proper scientific support. This can be partly explained by the fact that mechanisms of initial brain injury are still not well understood. Why additional neurological injury occurs during a patient's stay in the NeuroCritical Care Unit (NCCU) despite current best, evidence-based clinical practices, is also not well understood. However, over the past decade, better tools have become available to measure and monitor the impact of our clinical care on the rapidly changing physiology and chemistry of the injured brain. Some of these tools are CT, MRI, ultrasound, and catheter-based technology measuring blood flow and metabolism. These tools have enabled earlier detection of injury and complications and newer therapeutic strategies. Purpose: Examine disease pathways common to all brain injuries seen in the University of Maryland's 22-bed NCCU. Life-threatening neurological illnesses cared for in the NCCU include massive stroke, bleeding in and around the brain (subarachnoid hemorrhage, intracerebral hemorrhage, subdural hemorrhage, intraventricular hemorrhage), brain tumors, difficult to control seizures, neurologic infections, nerve and muscle diseases (such as myasthenia gravis or Guillain-Barre Syndrome), and spinal cord disorders among others. Many NCCU patients are comatose or paralyzed and may suffer injuries in other parts of the body as well. This effort will require the creation of a robust clinical database for the capture of data including patient characteristics (age, sex), clinical characteristics, medical treatments, surgical interventions, physiological data (such as vital signs, cerebral blood flow, intracranial pressure, cerebral oximetry, etc), laboratory data, and standard-of-care diagnostic studies such as electroencephalography (EEG), ultrasound, CT, MRI, and angiograms. Similar databases exist at other major centers for neurocritical care and have been instrumental to the identification of characteristics both predictive of and associated with outcomes of patients long after their stay in the NCCU. In addition, the samples collected will be included in the University of Maryland Medicine (UMM) Biorepository which is a shared resource to enable biomedical research by University of Maryland faculty.
Fever, defined as temperature higher than 38.3C (100.9 F), is common in patients with head injuries and is associated with poor recovery after injury. The current standard of care is to use oral acetaminophen (Tylenol) followed by a body cooling device. This method can effectively reduce fever but results in a high rate of shivering. Shivering is stressful to the heart and can further worsen brain injury. Methods to combat shivering have been developed and are successful in limiting the stress in the majority of patients that use a body cooling device. However, the drugs used to control shivering are sedating and may also interfere with brain recovery. The purpose of this study is to assess whether ibuprofen given intravenously is more effective in combating fever than the current standard of care. Should results from this study demonstrate that ibuprofen infusion is effective, a larger study will be conducted to determine whether this aggressive fever control regimen leads to improved recovery after brain injury.
Intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) occurs when small arteries in the brain rupture due to weakening by age, high blood pressure, and/or elevated cholesterol. In addition to artery rupture, recent data suggests that patients with ICH are also at risk for developing occlusion of arteries during the acute phase, called ischemic strokes. Data suggests these ischemic strokes can negatively impact patient outcomes. Diffusion weighted imaging (DWI) is a sequence on Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) that is a sensitive marker for ischemic strokes in the brain. In this proposal, our primary aim is examine prospectively the effect DWI abnormalities have on functional outcomes in patients with ICH. Our hypothesis is that the DWI abnormalities found on MRI of the brain lead to worse functional outcomes in patients with ICH
To determine the effect of early metoprolol administration after non-traumatic subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH).
Brain injury patients who meet defined criteria will be assigned to intensive insulin treatment (target blood glucose levels of 10-110 mg/dl) or conventional IV insulin treatment (target glucose of 150-170 mg/dl). Follow up will occur at 3, 6 and 12 months. The primary outcome measure will be neurological outcome at 12 months according to Karnofsky Performance Scale (KPS). A general view of outcome will also be presented as favorable (good recovery+ moderate disability), unfavorable (severely disabled+ vegetative state), and dead. Secondary outcome measures will be blood glucose levels and death.The investigators will also record systemic complications like pulmonary emboli, pulmonary edema, myocardial infarction, ventricular arrhythmias, and pneumonia.