Time Limited Trials to Reduce Non-Beneficial Intensive Care Unit Treatments
Completed · Not applicable
Conditions studied: Critical Illness, Communication
In brief
Overutilization of intensive care unit (ICU) treatments among patients with advanced medical illnesses and poor prognosis places them at risk for prolonged suffering with minimal anticipated benefit. Improving communication and shared decision-making between providers and patients/family members represents an opportunity to reduce potentially non-beneficial treatments. Time limited trials (TLTs) are agreements between clinicians and patients/surrogate decision-makers to use medical therapies over a defined period of time to observe if patients improve or deteriorate according to agreed-upon clinical outcomes. The objective of this project is to examine whether a quality improvement intervention that uses protocoled time limited trials as the default ICU communication/care planning strategy for patients with advanced medical illnesses will decrease the duration and intensity of non-beneficial ICU treatments without changing hospital mortality.
Key facts
- Study ID
- NCT04181294
- Run by
- Lundquist Institute for Biomedical Innovation at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center
- People needed
- 209
- Starts
- 2017-08-01
- Expected to finish
- 2019-12-31
- Last updated by the study team
- 2025-11-21
Who can join
Age: 18 and older. Sex: any. Healthy volunteers: not accepted.
You may qualify if…
- Patients admitted to the medical ICU who are determined on admission by the treating ICU physicians to be at high risk for potentially non-beneficial treatments based on ICU Admission and Triage Guidelines from the Society of Critical Care Medicine
You may not qualify if…
- Patients who cannot communicate for themselves and do not have surrogate decision-makers
Where it is running
- Los Angeles County-University of Southern California Medical Center — Los Angeles, California, United States
- Olive View Medical Center — Sylmar, California, United States
- Harbor UCLA Medical Center — Torrance, California, United States
Full record on ClinicalTrials.gov
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