Safar Center director Patrick M. Kochanek, MD, MCCM was the lead author of a report on the results of the Approaches and Decisions for Acute Pediatric Traumatic Brain Injury Trial (ADAPT) addressing the use of hyperosmolar therapy in severe pediatric TBI. The article was published in the March 2022 issue of JAMA Network Open.
This comparative effectiveness study evaluated the care provided to 1000 infants, children, and adolescent patients with severe TBI, treated in over 40 centers world-wide. The use of hypertonic saline to treat intracranial hypertension was shown to be superior to mannitol particularly in the setting of crises levels of intracranial pressure.
This multi-center report featured multiple former Safar Center and UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh trainees as co-authors including Drs. P. David Adelson, Nikki Miller Ferguson, Ajit Sarnaik, and Anthony Willyerd. ADAPT was led by Drs. Michael Bell–former Safar Center Associate Director and now chief of Critical Care Medicine at Children’s National Hospital in Washington DC, and Stephen Wisniewski, Professor of Epidemiology and Provost at the University of Pittsburgh.