Lancet
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Randomized Controlled Trial Multicenter Study Clinical Trial
Gastric intramucosal pH as a therapeutic index of tissue oxygenation in critically ill patients.
Falls in gastric intramucosal pH (pHi) are associated with morbidity and mortality in patients admitted to intensive-care units (ICU). We tested the hypothesis that ICU outcome can be improved by therapy guided by changes in pHi and aimed at improving systemic oxygen availability. We studied 260 patients admitted to ICUs with APACHE II scores of 15-25. ⋯ There were no significant differences between protocol and control groups in demographic characteristics, admission blood gases or haemoglobin concentration, number or type of organ system failures, or the intensity of ICU care. For patients admitted with low pHi, survival was similar in the protocol and control groups (37% vs 36%), whereas for those admitted with normal pHi, survival was significantly greater in the protocol than in the control group (58% vs 42%; p less than 0.01). Therapy guided by pHi measurements improved survival in patients whose pHi on admission to ICU was normal. pHi-guided resuscitation may help improve outcome in such patients by preventing splanchnic organ hypoxia and the development of a systemic oxygen deficit.
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Review Comparative Study
Systemic treatment of early breast cancer by hormonal, cytotoxic, or immune therapy. 133 randomised trials involving 31,000 recurrences and 24,000 deaths among 75,000 women. Early Breast Cancer Trialists' Collaborative Group.
In a worldwide collaboration, information was sought and centrally checked on mortality and recurrence for each woman in any randomised trial that began before 1985 of any aspect of systemic adjuvant therapy for early breast cancer. Checked data were available for 75,000 women (about 90% of those ever randomised), of whom 32% had died and another 10% had experienced recurrence. The parts now reviewed include 30,000 women in tamoxifen trials, 3000 in ovarian ablation trials, 11,000 in polychemotherapy trials, 15,000 in other chemotherapy comparisons, and 6000 in immunotherapy trials. ⋯ Indirect randomised comparisons do not reveal significant differences between different forms of polychemotherapy, or differences between different tamoxifen doses, but do show that long-term tamoxifen (eg, 2 years, or even 5 years) is significantly more effective than shorter tamoxifen regimens. In old age (70+) tamoxifen is of demonstrated efficacy, but chemotherapy has not been evaluated. Between ages 50 and 69 direct comparisons show that chemotherapy plus tamoxifen is better (1p less than 0.00001) than chemotherapy alone both for recurrence and for mortality, and better (1p less than 0.00001) than tamoxifen alone for recurrence.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)