Conditions: Edema Hypoproteinemia
Keywords: Edema Hypoproteinemia Albumin Diuresis Critical illness
Allocation: RANDOMIZED | Intervention model: PARALLEL
Enrollment: 46
Healthy volunteers: no

Brief summary:
Critically ill patients usually require intravenous fluids to correct low blood pressure and improve blood flow to vital organs. However, once the patient's blood pressure has improved, these fluids can leak out into various organs, including the lung, kidneys, and skin. Excess fluid in these tissues, called edema, has been associated with longer ICU stays and higher mortality. Thus removing excess fluid is an important goal. The simplest way to treat edema is to use diuretics, such as furosemide, which increase urine output.

To further improve urine output, patients are sometimes given albumin, a protein which helps to suck fluid out from the tissues, and keep it in the blood vessel, where it can be filtered in the kidney and removed in the urine. Although albumin is often used for this purpose, there is little evidence to support it. A large randomized controlled trial is needed to determine if albumin plus furosemide is truly more effective than furosemide alone in critically ill patients with low levels of blood albumin. We will perform a pilot study to assess the feasibility of such a trial.

Detailed description:

Arms:
arm 1: Administration of 25% albumin by intravenous infusion, twice daily for a total of 72 hours (6 treatments) arm 2: Administration of 100 mL normal saline by intravenous infusion, twice daily, for 72 hours (6 treatments)

Interventions: intervention 1: Intravenous albumin intervention 2: Normal saline
Intervention descriptions: intervention 1: None intervention 2: None

Protocol document: