Hemodynamic Phenotype and Capillary Refill Time-targeted Resuscitation Strategy

Plain-language summary

Septic shock is associated with a high mortality risk. Fluid overload occurs when fluids are administered to fluid unresponsive patients, but also when inappropriate resuscitation goals are pursued. Alongside, evidence confirms that abnormal peripheral perfusion after resuscitation is associated with increased morbidity and mortality. Targeted resuscitation associates with lower mortality, less organ dysfunction, and less intensity of treatment. Over-resuscitation may contribute to a worse outcome. Many patients remain hypovolemic after initial resuscitation. Others present very low diastolic arterial pressures (DAP) reflecting profound vasoplegia and may benefit from early norepinephrine (NE) instead of fluids. Administering fluids in this setting could increase the risk of fluid overload. In addition, relevant myocardial dysfunction is present in a significant number of patients. Pulse pressure (PP) and DAP evaluation may help clinicians to individualize initial management sparing unnecessary fluid loading. Objective: To test if a CRT-targeted resuscitation based on clinical hemodynamic phenotyping can improve a hierarchical clinical outcome - mortality, time to cessation of vital support, and length of hospital stay, all within 28 days - in septic shock patients as compared to usual care. A2 is a multicenter randomized controlled trial (RCT) comparing a CRT-targeted, hemodynamics-based resuscitation strategy with usual care in patients with early septic shock during a 6 h intervention period. A sample size of 1500 patients was calculated to detect a 6% absolute reduction in mortality in the CRT group, and the win-ratio method will be used to test the superiority in the hierarchical outcomes mentioned above. The combination of a CRT-targeted strategy with a clinical hemodynamic phenotyping may aid to personalize initial resuscitation with potential additional fluid-sparing effects. To categorize patients at baseline according to PP may conduct patients with low PP (\<40mmHg) to fluid responsiveness (FR) assessment and eventually fluid boluses, while patients with normal PP will be treated according to DAP, adjusting NE when to avoid further fluids loading in patients who normalize CRT. Fluid resuscitation will be focused on FR+ hypoperfused patients to prevent harmful fluid administration in FR- patients.

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