Patients with non-traumatic Subarachnoid Haemorrhage (SAH) requiring intensive care admission often experience respiratory complications including neurogenic pulmonary edema, pneumonia and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). Despite several studies reporting the prevalence of these complications’ heterogeneity in case definitions especially limits generalisability.
This is demonstrated in the difference in incidence of “ARDS” complicating ICU admission of patients with SAH: meta-analysis of demonstrated overall prevalence of 15.25% (95% CI 10.5%-20.0%) but with 97% of variability being attributable to between study differences (I2). Temporal variation in case definition between studies further worsens heterogeneity. The lack of a well-defined outcome set and case definitions endangers future attempts to characterise the effect of respiratory complications in SAH patients: cursory search of PubMed’s database demonstrates a >25% increase in search results pertaining to respiratory complications in patients with SAH compared to the previous decade.
Therefore, we aimed to conduct a scoping review to identify the types of respiratory complications reported in mechanically ventilated patients with non-traumatic SAH. Secondly, we aimed to compare and evaluate the case definitions of each respiratory complication used by included studies.
Key objectives include:
- What significant respiratory complications related to invasively ventilated patients with non-traumatic subarachnoid haemorrhage patients are reported in the literature.
- What definitions have been used to identify the above reported respiratory complications?
- To what extent does variability in case definitions explain between-study heterogeneity in the reported prevalence of respiratory complications relative to other study characteristics?
Supervisor: Neil Glassford
Neil.glassford2@monashhealth.org
Supervisor: Lavienraj Premraj
Lavienraj.premraj@monash.edu
Nicole Keh
Nkeh0003@student.monash.edu
Disease Category: Neurology
Disease Name: subarachnoid hemorrhage
Age Range: 16 - 120
Sex: Either
Nature of Intervention: Mechanical ventilation
- Clinical experts
- Researchers
- COS for clinical trials or clinical research
- Literature review
This study will follow the Joanna Briggs Institute methodology for scoping review and reported using the PRISMA-ScR guidelines. A comprehensive literature search will be conducted in MEDLINE, PubMed, Scopus, Embase and Google Scholar. Only studies in English will be included. There are no study date restrictions, and all study designs will be eligible for inclusion. Studies on traumatic subarachnoid haemorrhage will be excluded. Studies will be screened independently by at least 2 reviewers with a process to resolve differences. Data will be extracted using pre-defined form including respiratory complications and definitions. These findings will be synthesised descriptively to map out the reported respiratory complications and measurement approaches.