Landmark study set to change how critical care patients are treated
The George Institute runs a large-scale research program concerned with the care of critically ill patients admitted to hospital intensive care units. The program has focused on assessing the effects of several standard treatments that have not previously been properly evaluated. In the second of three large projects, the researchers discovered that the common practice of intensively lowering blood glucose in critically ill patients increased the risk of death by 10%.
Intensive blood glucose lowering had been widely recommended for acutely ill patients because high blood glucose levels were known to be linked to the risk of serious complications such as organ failure and death. However, no large-scale study had directly assessed the effects of blood glucose lowering.
Researchers from The George Institute, The Australian and New Zealand Intensive Care Society Clinical Trials Group, The Canadian Critical Care Trials Group and Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute set out to clarify the target range for blood glucose levels in critically ill patients. They studied over 6000 patients in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the USA for up to 90 days to assess whether the treatment would improve patients’ chance of survival.
The results of the NICE-SUGAR (Normoglycaemia in Intensive Care Evaluation and Survival Using Glucose Algorithm Regulation) , published in The New England Journal of Medicine indicate that international clinical guidelines for the care of critically ill patients need urgent review.
Read more about the NICE-SUGAR study.
