PROSpect: Prone and Oscillation Pediatric Clinical Trial

Severe pediatric acute respiratory distress syndrome (PARDS) is a life-threatening and frequent problem experienced by thousands of children each year. Little evidence supports current supportive practices during their critical illness. The overall objective of this study is to identify the best positional and/or ventilation practice that leads to improved patient outcomes in these critically ill children. We hypothesize that children with high moderate-severe PARDS treated with either prone positioning or high-frequency oscillatory ventilation (HFOV) will demonstrate more days off the ventilator when compared to children treated with supine positioning or conventional mechanical ventilation (CMV).

PROSpect is a two-by-two factorial, response-adaptive, randomized controlled clinical trial of supine/prone positioning and conventional mechanical ventilation (CMV)/high-frequency oscillatory ventilation (HFOV). About 60 pediatric intensive care units (PICUs), two thirds U.S. and one third international, with at least 5 years of experience with prone positioning and HFOV in the care of pediatric patients with severe Pediatric Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (PARDS), that can provide back-up extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) support, are participating. Eligible consecutive subjects with high moderate-severe PARDS will be randomized to one of four groups: supine/CMV, prone/CMV, supine/HFOV, prone/HFOV. Subjects who fail their assigned positional and/or ventilation therapy for either persistent hypoxia or hypercapnia may receive the reciprocal therapy while being considered for ECMO cannulation. Our primary outcome is ventilator-free days (VFD) through day 28, where non-survivors receive zero VFD. We hypothesize that children with severe PARDS treated with either prone positioning or HFOV will demonstrate ≥ 2 more VFD. Our secondary outcome is nonpulmonary organ failure-free days. We will also explore the interaction effects of prone positioning with HFOV on VFDs and also investigate the impact of these interventions on 90-day in-hospital mortality and, among survivors, the duration of mechanical ventilation, PICU and hospital length of stay, and the trajectory of post-PICU functional status and health-related quality of life (HRQL). Up to 800 subjects with severe PARDS will be randomized, stratified by age group and direct/indirect lung injury. Adaptive randomization will first occur after 300 patients are randomized and have been followed for 28 days, and every 100 patients thereafter. At these randomization update analyses, new allocation probabilities will be computed based on ongoing intention-to-treat trial results, increasing allocation to well performing arms and decreasing allocation to poorly performing arms. Data will be analyzed per intention-to-treat for the primary analyses and per-protocol received for primary, secondary and exploratory analyses.