The objective of the study is to survey a large cross-section of clinicians working in ICUs worldwide to describe contemporary practices in dosing, administration and monitoring of commonly prescribed antibiotics including beta-lactams, aminoglycosides and glycopeptides.

The study aims to answer the following questions:
a) What is the variation in dosing of commonly prescribed antibiotics in ICUs?
b) What is variation in administration approaches of commonly prescribed antibiotics in ICUs?
c) How widely used is TDM of commonly prescribed antibiotics in ICUs?
d) What dose optimisation strategies are currently being used in ICUs?
e) What are the current barriers to using newer dose optimisation strategies in ICUs?.

Committee: Jason Roberts, Alexis Tabah, Paul Williams, Os Cotta, Kathryn Wilks, Andrea Kwa, Sal Kanji, Marc Scheetz, Jiao Xie, Andras Farkas, Sonia Luque Pardos, Sahand Imani, Indy Sandaradura.

Survey of Practices and Physician Attitudes on Post-Cardiac Arrest Care (SPPAPCAC)

The purpose of this survey is to analyze current practices and attitudes regarding post-cardiac arrest care, specifically targeted temperature management (TTM) and coronary reperfusion strategies. The team is investigating practice patterns among a transdisciplinary group of clinicians, with the ultimate aim of identifying possible heterogeneity of practices, and the perception of these practices, on key components of care that warrant future prospective studies.

Steering Committee: Casey Carr, Torben Becker, Carolina Maciel, Nilan Bhakta, Melody Eckert

Administration of Systemic Corticosteroids among critically ill patients with COVID-19: (ASAP-ESICM) (ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT04866082).

This survey will inform about the Corticosteroid application to critically ill Covid-19 patients. It may be variable and may differ from evidence-based recommendations. Survey results may represent significant baseline data for further research considering the corticosteroid treatment in patients with COVID-19. The items of the questionnaire were generated through literature review and in-depth interviews with opinion leaders and potential respondents. Grouping into domains was performed after no new items emerged and consensus was achieved in focus-group sessions. Validation was performed based on table of specification with research questions on vertical axis and the domains on the horizontal axis. Items were reduced to the final questionnaire by iterative process. Pilot testing was performed after endorsement within three Czech medical societies: Czech Society of Intensive Care Medicine, Czech Society of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine and Czech Pneumological and Phthisiological Society.

Steering Committee: see here.

Renal replacement therapy modalities in intensive care units in 2021: An international survey describing practices and their explanatory factors.

Regarding the lack of recent data concerning the modality and management of RRT in ICU, and because it’s a prerequisite to designing future clinical trials comparing different modalities, it has been decided to perform an international survey to describe RRT epidemiology in ICUs and to determine factors influencing the choice of RRT modality among the intensive care units

The other objectives are to describe:

1. The availability and use of the different RRT modalities (continuous, intermittent, dialysis, filtration) in the ICU in 2021
2. The availability and use of different anticoagulation methods (citrate or heparin, systemic or regional) for RRT in the ICU 2021
3. The concerns of ICU physicians concerning RRT and their evidence-based medicine needs
4. The RRT settings

Steering committee: Arnaud Marel, Céline Monard, Thomas Rimmelé, Marlies Ostermann, Antoine Schneider, Michael Joannidis

Diagnostic, monitoring and rehabilitation strategies in patients with Intensive Care Unit-Acquired Weakness

This survey will inform about the different screening and diagnostic practices regarding ICUAW. It will enable discussion about the responsibilities in the interprofessional team. Furthermore, it might detect educational needs on the topic on national or ICU characteristic level. The results will also enable us to know which screening and diagnostic approaches can be expected for a multinational multicentric study on the topic without adding additional workload on the ICU or research team
because it is standard of care.

Lead: Johannes Ehler, MD, Universitätsmedizin Rostock

Steering Committee: Felix Klawitter, MD, Universitätsmedizin Rostock; Stefan Schaller, MD, Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin & ESICM NEXT Chair; Mette Berger, MD, Lausanne University Hospital & Chair ESICM MEN Section; Steffen Weber-Carstens, MD, Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin; Carol Hodgson, PhD, Monash University; Nicolai Goettel, MD, University of Florida College of Medicine

The Cerebral infarction from delayed cerebral ischemia (DCI) represents the leading cause of mortality and morbidity in patients surviving initial spontaneous subarachnoid haemorrhage (SAH).   

The aim of this project is to perform an international survey about practical issues (i.e. diagnosis, monitoring, prophylaxis and management) of cerebral vasospasm associated with delayed cerebral ischemia (DCI) in spontaneous subarachnoid haemorrhage (SAH) adult (> 18 years old) patients, requiring intensive care unit (ICU) admission.

The main endpoints will be to examine  diagnostic procedures, monitoring tools, prevention strategies and management options.

Steering Committee: Edoardo Picetti, Fabio Taccone, Pierre Bouzat, Mary Kay Bader, Giuseppe Citerio, Raimund Helbok, Janneke Horn, Robert Loch Macdonald, Victoria McCredie, Geert Meyfroidt, Cássia Righy, Chiara Robba, Deepak Sharma, Wade Smith, Jose I Suarez, Andrew Udy, Stefan Wolf,

This survey will provide an inside about true prevalence of bedside echocardiography. Although critical care journal and social media are very vocal about echocardiography use, the truth might be that it is still not widely adopted. By providing information about prevalence and limitations our survey will give valuable information on how to shape the speciality and accreditation programme in the future.

We would expect that the prevalence of echocardiography use among European anaesthetist and intensivist to be far lower than it is currently portraited by journal publications and on social media. Probably, large discrepancies in experience and frequency of echocardiography use will be found depending on the local accessibility of echocardiography devices and the experience of participants. We aim to point out these limiting factors.

This survey is endorsed by ESICM.

Steering committee: Ib Jammer (Norway), Mateusz Zawadka (United Kingdom), Adrian Wong (United Kingdom), Anna Janiszewska (Poland)