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FEAST trial wins BMJ Research Paper of the Year award
FEAST trial wins BMJ Research Paper of the Year
award
24 May 2012
The FEAST
trial has won the prestigious BMJ Research Paper of the Year
award. This international award recognises original research that
has the potential to contribute significantly to improving health
and health care.
The judges unanimously chose the FEAST trial.
Richard Hobbs, Head of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of
Oxford, and one of the judges said “The panel were impressed with
the rigour of the study, the relevance of the study to clinical
practice, and the expectation that these data will in fact, rapidly
change international guidelines.”
The FEAST trial investigated whether fluid
resuscitation helps improve the survival of children with shock
caused by infectious diseases. Shock affects around 10 per cent of
children admitted to African hospitals and sadly, 11-22 per cent of
these children die, often within hours of admission. Although fluid
resuscitation has been regarded as standard approach to treating
shock in developed nations, it was unclear whether this approach
could be safely used for African children. The FEAST trial was
conducted in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda and involved over 3000
children who presented with shock. The trial unexpectedly found
that rapid fluid resuscitation was actually harmful for children in
shock caused by severe infections (malaria and/or sepsis in
particular).
Kath Maitland, the Chief Investigator of the
FEAST trial said “We are very honoured to receive this award.
Designing and conducting an ethical emergency controlled trial
examining fluid resuscitation to international standards of good
clinical practice had been widely viewed as an impossible
challenge. The teams at the hospitals dedicated two years to
ensuring delivery of a robust trial that had an unexpected and
important result – which will certainly influence how sick African
children are managed in future.
“The findings of the trial were controversial
and surprising. This is why we need to do clinical trials. Fluid
resuscitation is so very common in paediatrics and yet has never
been tested anywhere in a controlled trial. The FEAST trial
demonstrates that high quality trials can be conducted in Africa-
and mean that 3 lives in every 100 hundred severely ill children
will be saved if the results are implemented.”
Watch one of the judges talk about their decision to give the
award to the FEAST team
Further information
