ER Patients Unlock Vital Info to Treating Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome

By Kate Rauch

Every year, nearly 200,000 Americans are admitted to hospital intensive care units with Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS).

The condition, marked by rapid respiratory failure, has a 30- to 40-percent mortality rate and is caused by major lung injury from trauma, septic shock, pneumonia, chemical exposure or other causes.

While current treatment focuses on keeping patients breathing through a mechanical ventilator, cutting-edge research led in part by UC San Francisco’s Carolyn Calfee, MD, an associate professor of medicine, is opening the door to the possibility of diagnosing and treating ARDS before it becomes life-threatening.

Key to Calfee’s work is the Early Assessment of Renal and Lung Injury (EARLI) study at UCSF Medical Center, a novel research design that enrolls patients at risk for ARDS straight from the emergency room (ER) – before their condition has taken a debilitating toll. A major hurdle to ARDS research is that the condition is so acute and fast-moving that by the time patients normally participate in studies, their health is significantly deteriorated.

“Most studies of critically ill patients enroll them after they reach the intensive care unit, by which time the horse is often out of the barn, in terms of the progress of their critical illness,” said Calfee, who works in the Pulmonary and Critical Care division at the UCSF School of Medicine.

“This cohort allows us to study the biology of the early phase of critical illness, when we may have the biggest chance of developing a successful intervention to prevent acute organ failure,” she added.

Read more at UCSF.edu

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