Intensive care medicine is a vital clinical service, supporting patients with severe or life-threatening conditions. Providing highly specialised care, intensive care clinicians support our hospital’s most vulnerable patients following highly invasive surgery or during multi-organ failure.

The Intensive Care Research Department is an extension of Cabrini’s Intensive Care Unit, which sees over 1 500 patients each year, with admissions of 48 hours on average. Out research seeks to:

• critically assess current clinical practice;
• identify opportunities to optimise intensive care delivery; and
• determine strategies for implementation in our hospitals.

Through close collaboration between our clinicians and researchers, the Department seeks to better understand determinant factors associated with patient outcomes. In doing so, greater insight as to the long-term impact of intensive care can be reached, allowing us to better assist patients, and their families and friends, for the present and years into their future.

Principal Investigators

Professor David Brewster
Professor Warwick Butt
Dr Deirdre Murphy
Dr Steve Philpot
Associate Professor Vineet Sarode

Research Coordinator

Lisa Dougherty

Airway Management

Checklists are a vital tool to promote patient safety within intensive care medicine, growing in use prior to and during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. The Department has led efforts to reinforce their continued importance in clinical guidelines for airway management, alongside its research examining leadership dynamics during high-stress airway management situations. Highlighting the powerful human factors that need consideration in forming airway management guidelines, the Department has also made major contributions concerning the increased use of video laryngoscopy during the pandemic, noting its benefits for remote procedure management while unable to identify causal links to improved patient outcomes.

STARGATE Study

Patient airway management remains a major challenge in the delivery of general anaesthetics, with cardiovascular collapses, hypoxemia, and cardiac arrest regular outcomes. Through a large international observational study, STARGATE aims to assess the incidence of these adverse events across both surgical and non-surgical environments, leading to a better understanding of air management approaches worldwide. Professor David Brewster will be the national coordinator of STARGATE for Australia, representing an extension of his multi-centre INTUBE study. With over 200 hospitals registered internationally and 20 within Australia, Cabrini completed recruitment in early 2024, contributing to an anticipated total of 10,500 participants.

BALANCE Trial

Current treatment guidelines for antibiotic therapies in bacterial blood infections, bacteraemia, are varied. BALANCE hopes to achieve greater specificity and understand the actual time needed for the clinical effectiveness of antibiotics in bacteraemia treatment. Through a randomised trial, intensive care patients will be placed on 7 or 14 day regimens, with survival rates recorded at 90 days. It is anticipated that this study will be able to determine the efficacy of shorter duration antibiotic therapies, which would improve patient experiences and quality of life.

SPRINT-SARI Study

Short Period Incidence of Severe Acute Respiratory Infection (SPRINT-SARI) remains a critically under-studied area of research. Through a collaboration of international partners, this study aims to better understand the disease subtype and highlight its global prevalence. In doing so, it is anticipated that substantive management strategies can be developed, including rapid response protocols for emerging infectious causes of SPINT-SARI.