Description

Cardiac arrest, respiratory failure, and major trauma are devastating critical conditions in children. Resuscitation from critical illness requires skillful airway management to optimize the delivery of oxygen to the lungs, preventing irreparable damage to the brain and heart. As the first to provide resuscitation care for critically ill children, prehospital EMS personnel are often the first to perform life-saving airway management.

The most common prehospital airway management techniques (bag-valve-mask ventilation [BVM], endotracheal intubation [ETI], and supraglottic airway insertion [SGA]) have important trade-offs between risks and benefits. Despite the challenges of ETI and national recommendations favoring BVM, many EMS personnel favor ETI over BVM. Newer SGA devices such as the laryngeal tube (LT), laryngeal mask airway (LMA), and i-gel® have not been compared with other techniques in children. National organizations, including the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, have declared the need for new, rigorous trials of all techniques to determine the best strategies for prehospital airway management in children. Interviews with front-line EMS personnel underscore the dire need for clear and strategic guidelines for managing the pediatric airway.

The Pediatric Prehospital Airway Resuscitation Trial (Pedi-PART) will determine the best strategies for prehospital airway management in critically ill children. The trial aims are Aim I-Primary Objective (Effectiveness)-Stage I: Determine if [BVM-only] or [BVM followed by SGA] results in better ICU-free survival in critically ill children with cardiac arrest, major trauma, or respiratory failure. Stage II: Determine if [winner of Stage I] or [BVM followed by ETI] results in better ICU-free survival. Bayesian analyses will determine the transition from Stage I to Stage II, ensuring optimal deployment of available subjects to address the postulated questions. Aim 2- Secondary Objective (Safety)-Stage I: Determine if [BVM followed by SGA] results in fewer prehospital and hospital safety events compared with [BVM-only] in critically ill children with cardiac arrest, major trauma, or respiratory failure. Stage II: Determine if the winner of Stage I results in fewer safety events compared with [BVM followed by ETI].

The trial will use a Bayesian Adaptive Sequential Comparison Platform Trial (BASiC-PT) design and will be executed in two sequential stages. Stage I: Determine if [BVM-only] or [BVM followed by SGA] results in better ICU-free survival in critically ill children with cardiac arrest, major trauma, or respiratory failure. Stage II: Determine if [winner of Stage I] or [BVM followed by ETI] results in better ICU-free survival. Bayesian analyses will determine the transition from Stage I to Stage II, ensuring optimal deployment of available subjects to address the postulated questions.