Treatment of Dyspnea in Do-not-intubate Patients

Dyspnea Clinical Trial

Official title:

Treatment of Dyspnea in Do-not-intubate (DNI) Patients

Clinical Trial Details — Status: Active, not recruiting

Administrative data

• NCT number: NCT02114944
• Other study ID #: IRB-11227
• Status: Active, not recruiting
• Start date: April 2014
• Est. completion date: December 1, 2023

Study information

• Verified date: April 2023
• Source: Tufts Medical Center
• Contact: n/a
• Is FDA regulated: No
• Study type: Observational

Clinical Trial Summary

Patients with severe chronic diseases are often admitted to the hospital complaining of shortness of breath. Some of these patients decide that they do not want placement of a breathing tube in the windpipe to assist their breathing. In this situation, these patients are treated with oxygen, a variety of medications like morphine or masks that are connected to breathing machines, something called bilevel positive airway pressure (BiPAP) or noninvasive ventilation (NIV), to help with their breathing. Not much is known about how much noninvasive ventilation helps these patients, especially how comfortable they feel with it and how much their families think it helps.

Our aim is to monitor use of ways to help breathing in patients who don't want a breathing tube, see how often noninvasive ventilation is used and ask surviving patients, patient's families and caregivers about their experience with noninvasive ventilation and how much it seemed to help.

With our findings, we hope to improve the use of noninvasive ventilation in these patients and come up with ways to relieve their shortness of breath and provide as much comfort as possible.

Description:

Background: Respiratory symptoms, dyspnea and acute respiratory failure are often reported in patients admitted to the Hospital with a do-not-intubate (DNI) order. These patients are routinely treated with medical therapy, sometimes to reverse the underlying process, but also often to achieve palliation. The therapies include opioids or anxiolytics, oxygen, CPAP and non-invasive ventilation (NIV) depending on the underlying disease.

Rationale: Considering that most of the available data on the palliative use of NIV are limited to short-term prognosis and are collected selecting DNI patients among those subjects already receiving NIV treatment. A prospective observational study focusing on therapies offered to patients entering the hospital with or switching to a DNI status during the hospitalization would be helpful to fill in the blanks regarding the current palliative treatment of dyspnea in critically ill DNI patients. The assessment of patients' symptoms and comfort and family members' perspective would be important to further understand how the discussion with healthcare proxies and families should be addressed in relation to end-of life-decisions. In addition, the collection of health care providers' impressions on the use of different treatments to alleviate dyspnea and respiratory distress in this situation could help to better understand how to implement palliative treatment of respiratory symptoms in DNI patients.

Our aim is to monitor and establish the prevalence of use of NIV among DNI patients and to assess patients, family members' and caregivers' perspectives on the patient's and their own experience of NIV relative to other approaches to palliating symptoms.

Study design: A prospective, observational study enrolling all consecutive patients with dyspnea and/or acute respiratory failure with DNI orders admitted to the study site.

Study procedures: Subjects participating in the study will be treated as per hospital procedure and according to the attending physician orders, to maintain oxygen saturation at the targeted level and to optimize patient comfort using anxiolytics and narcotics as indicated. No changes in the standard of care will be performed based on participation in the study.

Some data (demographics, medications, vitals, arterial blood gas, history of present illnes and past medical history, treatment plan) will be extracted from medical records. A daily assessment of dyspnea score (Numeric rating scale, (NRS)), comfort (NRS) and pain (NRS) will be performed. Patients and family members will be asked to fill in a questionnaire at day 3. Heal care providers (attending physician, nurse and RT) will be asked to fill in a questionnaire at discharge. Family members and/or patients will be contacted by phone 30 days after discharge to get additional information about patient's outcome.

Research plan: Demographics and baseline characteristics of patients will be summarized for each group overall and by cohorts (DNI on NIV, DNI on CPAP, DNI with no ventilator support). Continuous variables will be reported as mean ± standard deviation. Categorical variables will be reported as n and %. For the primary outcome, a one-way ANOVA will be used to compare the difference in means between the groups. If the data are not normally distributed, the Krusman-Wallis test will be performed. Regression analysis will also be conducted to evaluate the consistency of treatment effects across the cohorts, controlling for potential confounding factors at baseline.

A Chi-square test (or Fisher's exact test if the counts are below 5) will be used to compare the distribution of categorical outcomes between the groups. Where appropriate, generalized linear models will be fitted with categorical and count data to evaluate the consistency of treatment effects across the cohorts, controlling for potential confounding factors at baseline.

Recruitment information / eligibility

• Status: Active, not recruiting
• Enrollment: 400
• Est. completion date: December 1, 2023
• Est. primary completion date: September 1, 2020
• Accepts healthy volunteers: No
• Gender: All
• Age group: 18 Years and older

Eligibility

Inclusion Criteria:

• Patients of 18 or more years of age

• Patients presenting to the study site with dyspnea, respiratory distress and/or acute respiratory failure.

• Patients who have or acquire a DNI order during their hospital stay

• Consent to participate in the study

Exclusion Criteria:

• No exclusion criteria

Termination criteria:

• Withdraw DNI order

Related Conditions & MeSH terms

• Acute on Chronic Respiratory Failure
• Acute Respiratory Failure
• Dyspnea
• Respiratory Insufficiency

Intervention

Device:
• NIV
Patients treated, as per attending physician's decision, with noninvasive ventilation
• CPAP
Patient treated, as per attending physician's decision, with CPAP
• Standard oxygen
Patient treated, as per attending physician's decision with standard oxygen therapy either as primary respiratory therapy or rest therapy during breaks off CPAP or NIV
• HFNC
Patients treated, as per attending physician's decision, with high-flow nasal cannula either as primary therapy or rest therapy during breaks off NIV or CPAP

Locations

Country	Name	City	State
Italy	Fondazione IRCCS Ca Granda Ospedale Maggiore Policlinico	Milan
United States	Tufts Medical Center	Boston	Massachusetts

Sponsors (2)

Lead Sponsor	Collaborator
Tufts Medical Center	Fondazione IRCCS Ca' Granda, Ospedale Maggiore Policlinico

Countries where clinical trial is conducted

United States,  Italy, 

References & Publications (9)

Azoulay E, Kouatchet A, Jaber S, Lambert J, Meziani F, Schmidt M, Schnell D, Mortaza S, Conseil M, Tchenio X, Herbecq P, Andrivet P, Guerot E, Lafabrie A, Perbet S, Camous L, Janssen-Langenstein R, Collet F, Messika J, Legriel S, Fabre X, Guisset O, Touati S, Kilani S, Alves M, Mercat A, Similowski T, Papazian L, Meert AP, Chevret S, Schlemmer B, Brochard L, Demoule A. Noninvasive mechanical ventilation in patients having declined tracheal intubation. Intensive Care Med. 2013 Feb;39(2):292-301. doi: 10.1007/s00134-012-2746-2. Epub 2012 Nov 27. — View Citation

Curtis JR, Cook DJ, Sinuff T, White DB, Hill N, Keenan SP, Benditt JO, Kacmarek R, Kirchhoff KT, Levy MM; Society of Critical Care Medicine Palliative Noninvasive Positive VentilationTask Force. Noninvasive positive pressure ventilation in critical and palliative care settings: understanding the goals of therapy. Crit Care Med. 2007 Mar;35(3):932-9. doi: 10.1097/01.CCM.0000256725.73993.74. — View Citation

Levy M, Tanios MA, Nelson D, Short K, Senechia A, Vespia J, Hill NS. Outcomes of patients with do-not-intubate orders treated with noninvasive ventilation. Crit Care Med. 2004 Oct;32(10):2002-7. doi: 10.1097/01.ccm.0000142729.07050.c9. — View Citation

Nava S, Ferrer M, Esquinas A, Scala R, Groff P, Cosentini R, Guido D, Lin CH, Cuomo AM, Grassi M. Palliative use of non-invasive ventilation in end-of-life patients with solid tumours: a randomised feasibility trial. Lancet Oncol. 2013 Mar;14(3):219-27. doi: 10.1016/S1470-2045(13)70009-3. Epub 2013 Feb 11. — View Citation

Nava S, Sturani C, Hartl S, Magni G, Ciontu M, Corrado A, Simonds A; European Respiratory Society Task Force on Ethics and decision-making in end stage lung disease. End-of-life decision-making in respiratory intermediate care units: a European survey. Eur Respir J. 2007 Jul;30(1):156-64. doi: 10.1183/09031936.00128306. — View Citation

Organized jointly by the American Thoracic Society, the European Respiratory Society, the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine, and the Societe de Reanimation de Langue Francaise, and approved by ATS Board of Directors, December 2000. International Consensus Conferences in Intensive Care Medicine: noninvasive positive pressure ventilation in acute Respiratory failure. Am J Respir Crit Care Med. 2001 Jan;163(1):283-91. doi: 10.1164/ajrccm.163.1.ats1000. No abstract available. — View Citation

Puntillo K, Nelson JE, Weissman D, Curtis R, Weiss S, Frontera J, Gabriel M, Hays R, Lustbader D, Mosenthal A, Mulkerin C, Ray D, Bassett R, Boss R, Brasel K, Campbell M. Palliative care in the ICU: relief of pain, dyspnea, and thirst--a report from the IPAL-ICU Advisory Board. Intensive Care Med. 2014 Feb;40(2):235-248. doi: 10.1007/s00134-013-3153-z. Epub 2013 Nov 26. — View Citation

Schettino G, Altobelli N, Kacmarek RM. Noninvasive positive pressure ventilation reverses acute respiratory failure in select "do-not-intubate" patients. Crit Care Med. 2005 Sep;33(9):1976-82. doi: 10.1097/01.ccm.0000178176.51024.82. — View Citation

Sinuff T, Cook DJ, Keenan SP, Burns KE, Adhikari NK, Rocker GM, Mehta S, Kacmarek R, Eva K, Hill NS. Noninvasive ventilation for acute respiratory failure near the end of life. Crit Care Med. 2008 Mar;36(3):789-94. doi: 10.1097/CCM.0B013E3181653584. — View Citation

Outcome

Type	Measure	Description	Time frame	Safety issue
Primary	Prevalence of use of Noninvasive ventilation in DNI patients		Day 1
Secondary	Subjects' comfort	To define subjects' comfort based on the treatment they are receiving	Day 1 to 5
Secondary	Dyspnea score	To define the dyspnea score based on the treatment the subjects are receiving	Day 1 to 5
Secondary	Family members' impressions	Collect family members' impression on the respiratory device chosen to treat dyspnea and acute respiratory failure	Day 3
Secondary	Family member's impressions	Collect family members' impression on the respiratory device chosen to treat dyspnea and acute respiratory failure	Day 30