View clinical trials related to Circulatory Failure.
Filter by:It has been well established that only 40 to 60% of the patients hospitalized for inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS) positively respond to volume expansion (VE). The fluid responsiveness is usually estimated by assessing VE-induced change in stroke volume (SV). To guide prescriptions and possibly avoid deleterious effects of inappropriate VE, several clinical studies demonstrated that invasive dynamic indices based on heart-lung interactions permit an accurate prediction of the hemodynamic effects induced by VE. Mechanical ventilation induces cyclic changes in intrathoracic and transpulmonary pressures that transiently affect venous return, right and left ventricular preload, resulting in pronounced cyclic changes in SV in preload-dependent, but not in preload-independent patients. These cyclic changes in SV can be evaluated by the cyclic changes in arterial pulse pressure. Several studies have shown that pulse pressure variation is able to predict fluid responsiveness in patients in the operating room and intensive care unit (ICU). However, this technique requires percutaneous arterial catheterization, which is associated with several rare but serious complications (thrombosis, infections, pseudoaneurysm,hematoma, and bleeding). A method for assessing noninvasive arterial blood pressure using an electropneumatic control loop was introduced by Penaz in 1973. Briefly, the blood volume in a finger is measured and kept constant by applying corresponding external pressure. The continuously changing external pressure needed to keep the volume constant directly corresponds to the arterial pressure and, therefore can be used as continuous measurement of arterial blood pressure. Numerous studies evaluating the accuracy of this technology, e.g., Finapres™ (Ohmeda Monitoring Systems, Englewood, CO), and more recently of the Infinity CNAP™ SmartPod (Dräger Medical AG & Co.KG, Lübeck, Germany). The basic operating principle of the CNAP™ is similar to the Finapres™, but CNAP™ uses multiple control loops. It has recently been shown that CNAP provides real-time estimates of mean arterial blood pressure (MAP) comparable with those measured by an invasive intraarterial catheter system during general anaesthesia. The accuracy of the measures and the respiratory variations in pulse pressure obtained with the CNAP system have not yet been studied in ICU.
After a basic training to echocardiography, emergency physicians will have to answer simple clinical questions about circulatory failure mechanisms. The objective of the study is to assess the agreement between these answers and those of the expert physician in patients admitted in the emergency department with a circulatory failure due to sepsis or not. Emergency physicians will volunteer to take part in a basic training on echocardiography. The training will include 4 hours of theory, 2 hours of interactive clinical cases and 6 hours of tutored practice at patients' bedside (10 to 15 examinations). The objective of the practice sessions will be to learn the technical grounds of transthoracic echocardiography (TTE), the different views and to identify the anatomical structures. The second part of the study will start after the training. Each eligible patient will be successively assessed by two investigators: one emergency physician recently trained and the expert physician. The echocardiography will be performed as soon as possible in the emergency department before or after the initiation of treatment without delaying it. The order of hemodynamic assessments will be random depending on the availability of the investigators; both assessments will however be performed within 30 minutes. Each investigator will independently read the echocardiography in real time at patients' bedside. They will then answer a limited list of standardized questions using two-choice answers or predefined choices. Finally investigators will choose a therapeutic proposition among a predefined list based on the answers. Only the results of the echocardiography performed by the expert physician will be used in patient management.