Much research is technical and esoteric. Some research is fundamental and answers questions we want to answer every day. Often the first is easy to do (just add a lab and equipment), but the second is really, really hard.
Mark Peters and team have just published the OxyPICU trial in the Lancet. It’s the world’s biggest ever individually randomised trial in PICU, and involved most of the PICUs in the UK to achieve almost 2000 randomisations.
The question posed is simple: is a goal of 88-92% oxygen saturations better than 94-98%?
We go through the methodology, the statistics (probabalistic index anyone? It’s really simple once it’s explained), the results, the implications, and the implementation.
This study has gone straight in to the Top Ten PICU Studies, and will be a cornerstone of practice for the foreseeable future. We have done the hard work for you, so listen and you’ll be able to quote the results, and even parts of the supplemental data.
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