Overview

Welcome to M.E.T.R.I.C (Multidisciplinary Epidemiology and Translational Research in Intensive Care).

Acute critical illness is complex. Different factors, such as underlying disease or injury, physiologic impairments and patient predispositions, interact closely with multiple life support interventions, organizational factors and patient and provider preferences. At Mayo Clinic, we continuously observe the clinical course and outcomes of critically ill patients and use basic epidemiologic principles to identify potentially beneficial or harmful practices. We take advantage of medical informatics and electronic medical records to facilitate the implementation of best practices and improve the quality of care in the ICU in a cost-effective manner. Sophisticated data retrieval and analysis techniques allow us to search for new knowledge regarding disease mechanisms and the response of the human body to acute illness or injury.

Our main interests are related to the epidemiology, pathophysiology and management of specific critical care syndromes such as acute lung injury, sepsis and shock. In collaboration with the Thoracic Disease Research Unit, Anesthesia Clinical Research Unit, Division of Transfusion Medicine, Department of Anesthesiology, Department of Health Sciences Research and several national and international partners (University of California San Francisco, ARDS-network, International Study of Mechanical Ventilation, University of Amsterdam) we have been working on several projects related to the prevention and treatment of acute lung injury/acute respiratory distress syndrome (ALI/ARDS), and in particular its iatrogenic causes (ventilator associated lung injury-VALI, transfusion related lung injury-TRALI). In additional projects we study the influence of:

1. ICU structure: Staffing, housestaff education
2. Processes:
   • Criteria for determining safety for discharging patients from ICU
   • Evidence based practices of sedation, invasive and noninvasive mechanical ventilation, blood product transfusion and sepsis
3. Outcomes: Performance of individual ICUs based on benchmarks derived from severity prognostic models