Critical Care

Critical care wardCritical care involves the care of the sickest patients in the hospital. Critically ill patients have usually been through a significant insult to their body (such as trauma, infection, burn) and have developed organ failure and require life-support. Critical Care is the largest theme bringing together clinicians and scientists from diverse backgrounds and includes collaborative research from hospitals throughout north-west London. Investigations range from evaluating biological mechanisms of organ failure through to the development of innovative technologies which allow the short-term and long-term support and recovery of organs. 

Many people are exposed to the environment of an Intensive care unit (ICU) either personally or through a family member. It is often a life-changing event and our work aims to reduce this impact facilitating post-ICU recovery.

Research themes:

Citation

BibTex format

@article{Herrmann:2015:10.1039/C5NR01851J,
author = {Herrmann, IK and Bertazzo, S and O'Callaghan, D and Schlegel, AA and Kallepitis, C and Antcliffe, D and Gordon, A and Stevens, MM},
doi = {10.1039/C5NR01851J},
journal = {Nanoscale},
pages = {13511--13520},
title = {Differentiating sepsis from non-infectious systemic inflammation based on microvesicle-bacteria aggregation},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/C5NR01851J},
volume = {7},
year = {2015}
}
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RIS format (EndNote, RefMan)

TY  - JOUR
AB  - Sepsis is a severe medical condition and a leading cause of hospital mortality. Prompt diagnosis and early treatment has a significant, positive impact on patient outcome. However, sepsis is not always easy to diagnose, especially in critically ill patients. Here, we present a conceptionally new approach for the rapid diagnostic differentiation of sepsis from non-septic intensive care unit patients. Using advanced microscopy and spectroscopy techniques, we measure infection-specific changes in the activity of nano-sized cell-derived microvesicles to bind bacteria. We report on the use of a point-of-care-compatible microfluidic chip to measure microvesicle-bacteria aggregation and demonstrate rapid (≤1.5 hour) and reliable diagnostic differentiation of bacterial infection from non-infectious inflammation in a double-blind pilot study. Our study demonstrates the potential of microvesicle activities for sepsis diagnosis and introduces microvesicle-bacteria aggregation as a potentially useful parameter for making early clinical management decisions.
AU  - Herrmann,IK
AU  - Bertazzo,S
AU  - O'Callaghan,D
AU  - Schlegel,AA
AU  - Kallepitis,C
AU  - Antcliffe,D
AU  - Gordon,A
AU  - Stevens,MM
DO  - 10.1039/C5NR01851J
EP  - 13520
PY  - 2015///
SN  - 2040-3364
SP  - 13511
TI  - Differentiating sepsis from non-infectious systemic inflammation based on microvesicle-bacteria aggregation
T2  - Nanoscale
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/C5NR01851J
UR  - http://hdl.handle.net/10044/1/25154
VL  - 7
ER  -
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