JAMA : the journal of the American Medical Association
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Randomized Controlled Trial Multicenter Study Comparative Study
Effect of Early Sustained Prophylactic Hypothermia on Neurologic Outcomes Among Patients With Severe Traumatic Brain Injury: The POLAR Randomized Clinical Trial.
After severe traumatic brain injury, induction of prophylactic hypothermia has been suggested to be neuroprotective and improve long-term neurologic outcomes. ⋯ Among patients with severe traumatic brain injury, early prophylactic hypothermia compared with normothermia did not improve neurologic outcomes at 6 months. These findings do not support the use of early prophylactic hypothermia for patients with severe traumatic brain injury.
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Bayesian analysis of clinical trial data may provide useful information to aid in study interpretation, especially when trial evidence suggests that the benefits of an intervention are uncertain, such as in a trial that evaluated early extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) for severe acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). ⋯ Post hoc Bayesian analysis of data from a randomized clinical trial of early extracorporeal membrane oxygenation compared with conventional lung-protective ventilation with the option for rescue extracorporeal membrane oxygenation among patients with very severe acute respiratory distress syndrome provides information about the posterior probability of mortality benefit under a broad set of assumptions that may help inform interpretation of the study findings.