A Prospective, Randomized, Controlled Study on the Use of Dexmedetomidine to Facilitate Extubation in Surgical Intensive-Care-Unit Patients Who Failed Previous Weaning Attempts

Sixty patients who are admitted to the surgical intensive care unit (ICU) at San Francisco General Hospital will be referred to the investigators for enrollment into a prospective, unblinded, randomized study of dexmedetomidine. Each patient will be considered by the critical care team as a suitable candidate for weaning and extubation based on inclusion/ exclusion criteria. Pregnant patients will not be enrolled and this will be determined by a negative urine or serum pregnancy test from admission. If none is available a pregnancy test will be performed prior to enrollment. Patients considered difficult to wean will be based on the following criteria:

Eligible patients will be randomized to either the control arm or the dexmedetomidine arm in a 1:1 ratio by using sealed envelopes.

Patient randomized to the control arm will be extubated per standard hospital protocol. This arm of the study will be observational and these patients will be extubated by the attending physician for that patient whenever they are hemodynamically stable enough to tolerate another weaning trial. The study team will collect the same data points for the control arm as in the dexmedetomidine arm. This includes ABGs, heart rate, mean blood pressure, respiratory rate and RASS scores (see description below of data points and collection time points.) Arterial blood gases will be drawn for the control arm of the study.

Patients on the dexmedetomidine arm will be started on dexmedetomidine at either 0.5 mcg/kg/hr or 0.7 mcg/kg/hr 1 hour prior to extubation. The drug calculation was based upon an average taken between the patient's measured and predicted body weight. Background sedation will be generally facilitated with lorazepam, midazolam or propofol, while analgesia will be maintained with either fentanyl or hydromorphine. After starting dexmedetomidine background sedation and analgesia will be titrated down and discontinued if possible. Analgesia levels also will be reduced if tolerated. Dexmedetomidine will be titrated according to blood pressure, RASS and heart rate response and the dose will be lowered only after sedation is discontinued or markedly reduced. Aerosolized lidocaine (20 mg) therapy will be initiated prior to the weaning trial to prevent excessive coughing in all patients.

Shortly after the dexmedetomidine infusion is started, PSV will be commenced at 5 cm H2O above 5 cm H2O of continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP). Patients will be weaned to CPAP and evaluated for extubation.