The EPIC Project: Impact of Implementing the EMS Traumatic Brain Injury Treatment Guidelines (EPIC)

August 25, 2018 updated by: Daniel Spaite, University of Arizona

Impact of Implementing the EMS Traumatic Brain Injury Treatment Guidelines

Evaluation of the impact (on survival and other outcomes) of implementing the Brain Trauma Foundation/National Association of EMS Physicians Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) guidelines in the prehospital EMS systems throughout the state of Arizona.

Study Overview

Status

Completed

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Detailed Description

  • Significance: Approximately 1.4 million victims of Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) are seen in emergency departments each year in the U.S. and, of those, 50,000 die and 235,000 are hospitalized. A least 2% of the U.S. population has a TBI-related long-term need for help to perform activities of daily living. There is growing evidence that the management of TBI in the early minutes after injury profoundly impacts outcome. This has led to the promulgation of evidence-based TBI treatment guidelines by authoritative national and international scientific bodies. Reports on guideline implementation in the hospital setting are very promising. However, no studies have evaluated their impact in the prehospital setting. While randomized prehospital trials to identify the effectiveness of the guidelines would clearly be optimal, the strong indirect evidence currently precludes withholding guideline therapy because of ethical considerations. Thus a large, prospective, historically controlled, observational study is the best methodology currently available to evaluate the effectiveness of implementing the guidelines in the prehospital setting.
  • Specific Aim: To test the hypothesis that implementation of the TBI guidelines in a statewide EMS system will reduce mortality and improve non-mortality outcomes in adults and children with moderate to severe TBI.
  • Objective #1: Implement the nationally-vetted TBI guidelines across a broad variety of EMS systems (urban, suburban and rural) throughout the State of Arizona. This will be accomplished through the statewide collaboration between the University of Arizona, the Arizona Department of Health Services, and local EMS agencies responding to 85% of the state's population. This will mirror the approach that has been successfully employed to study and document a tripling of patient survival from out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in the state.
  • Objective #2: Collect prehospital EMS and trauma center data on severe TBI patients cared for by participating EMS agencies to determine pre-implementation and post-implementation injury severity/risk-adjustment measures and outcomes.
  • Objective #3: Evaluate the impact of prehospital guideline implementation on the following outcomes: 1) Overall mortality (primary outcome), 2) mortality among patients who are intubated prior to hospital arrival, and 3) non-mortality outcomes such as hospital/intensive care unit length of stay, ventilator days, and patient disposition.
  • Relevance/health impact: The societal burden of TBI is immense. While the potential for dramatically reducing morbidity and mortality by early treatment appears to be great, the effectiveness of the prehospital guidelines remains unproven. Demonstrating the impact of guideline therapy would potentially lead to widespread implementation of the effective interventions. This could dramatically reduce morbidity and mortality from this major public health problem. On the other hand, if the guidelines are not effective despite confirmed implementation across a wide variety of EMS systems throughout the entire state, this would provide the ethical basis for conducting future randomized trials.

Study Type

Observational

Enrollment (Actual)

26873

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Locations

  • United States
    • Arizona
      • Phoenix, Arizona, United States, 85004
        • Arizona Emergency Medicine Research Center

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

  • ADULT
  • OLDER_ADULT
  • CHILD

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

No

Genders Eligible for Study

All

Sampling Method

Probability Sample

Study Population

Adults and children of all ages with acute, moderate or severe TBI cared for in the participating EMS systems of Arizona who are taken to a Level 1 Trauma Center (either directly by EMS or transfered by EMS). This will include approximately 4 years of retrospective cases and 4.5 years of prospective cases.

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  • Adults and children with physical trauma who: 1) are transported directly to or are transferred to a level I TC by participating EMS agencies, 2) have hospital diagnosis(es) consistent with TBI (either isolated or multisystem trauma that includes TBI), and 3) meet at least one of the following definitions for severe TBI: a) last prehospital GCS or first hospital/trauma center GCS <9; b) AIS-head of ≥3, c) CDC Barell Matrix-Type 1, d) undergo prehospital ETI, nasal intubation, or cricothyrotomy.

Exclusion Criteria:

  • Patients with brain injury from: 1) non-mechanical mechanisms (e.g., drowning); 2) choking, primary asphyxiation, or strangulation; 3) environmental injury (e.g., hyperthermia); 4) poisoning (e.g., drug overdose, carbon monoxide, insecticides); 5) intracranial hemorrhage of non-traumatic origin; 6) other non-traumatic, acute neurological emergencies (e.g., bacterial meningitis).

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

Cohorts and Interventions

Group / Cohort
Intervention / Treatment
Pre-implementation cohort ("before")
This cohort is a combination of retrospective and some prospective severe TBI patients cared for in the EMS systems of Arizona BEFORE implementation of the national prehospital TBI management guidelines
Post-implementation cohort ("after")
This cohort is a comprised of prospective severe TBI patients cared for in the EMS systems of Arizona AFTER training EMS providers in the implementation of the national prehospital TBI management guidelines. It is intended that these patients will receive the "bundle" of care specified in the TBI Guidelines.
Other: The National Prehospital TBI Management Guidelines
In the post-implementation (after) cohort, implementation of the entire "bundle" of the TBI treatment guidelines with special emphasis on prevention and treatment of hypotension (IV crystalloids), prevention and treatment of hypoxia (pre-oxygenation with high-flow O2 via non-rebreather mask, bag-valve-mask, extraglottic airways/intubation when basic maneuvers have failed), and prevention of hyperventilation (in intubated patients) and prevention/treatment of hypoventilation (in all patients).
Other Names:
  • Brain Trauma Foundation TBI Guidelines
  • National Association of EMS Physicians TBI Guidelines

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Survival
Time Frame: hospital discharge
Participants will be followed for the duration of hospital stay. The average time from admission to either discharge or death is expected to be approximately 3 weeks.
hospital discharge

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
hospital length of stay
Time Frame: discharge from hospital
This parameter will be the number of days that the patients spend in their initial, acute hospitalization. An average of 3 weeks is expected.
discharge from hospital
Intensive care unit length of stay
Time Frame: admission to ICU to transfer from ICU
This parameter will be the number of days that the patients spend in the ICU. An average of 1 week is expected.
admission to ICU to transfer from ICU
ventilator days
Time Frame: during hospitalization
When applicable, the number of days a patient is on a ventilator. This is expected to be an average of 2 days among all patients and 1 week among the subgroup of patients who are placed on a ventilator.
during hospitalization
Patient disposition
Time Frame: hospital discharge
where the patient was discharged or transferred to (e.g., skilled nursing facility, home, rehabilitation hospital) (average 3 weeks)
hospital discharge

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

University of Arizona

Investigators

  • Principal Investigator: Daniel W Spaite, MD, University of Arizona

Publications and helpful links

The person responsible for entering information about the study voluntarily provides these publications. These may be about anything related to the study.

General Publications

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start

September 1, 2011

Primary Completion (ACTUAL)

August 1, 2017

Study Completion (ACTUAL)

August 1, 2017

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

April 15, 2011

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

April 20, 2011

First Posted (ESTIMATE)

April 21, 2011

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (ACTUAL)

August 28, 2018

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

August 25, 2018

Last Verified

August 1, 2018

More Information

Terms related to this study

Keywords

Additional Relevant MeSH Terms

Other Study ID Numbers

  • EPIC-NINDS-R01NS071049

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

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