The PHRC -N celebrated its 30th anniversary!

Each year, the General Directorate for Healthcare Supply ( DGOS ) launches this call for research projects allowing hospital teams to submit applications, with a view to obtaining funding, with a triple objective:

• Boost hospital clinical research with a view to promoting medical progress;
• Participate in improving the quality of care through the evaluation of new diagnostic and therapeutic methods;
• Scientifically validate new medical knowledge with a view to identifying therapeutic innovations and implementing dissemination strategies in the health system.

Since 1993, Caen Normandy University Hospital has obtained 162 funded projects. Two projects carried out by the intensive care and intensive care were particularly notable for the establishment.

Central venous catheters (CVCs) have potentially serious but rare complications, such as catheter-related infections, deep vein thrombosis (DVT), and pneumothorax.

The PHRC was designed to examine whether subclavian, internal jugular, or femoral access was associated with a difference in the rate of major catheter-related complications combining catheter-related infection or symptomatic DVT.

With 3,027 patients included over three years in France, this study demonstrated that subclavian vein catheterization was associated with a lower risk of CVC-related infection and symptomatic thrombosis, but with a higher risk of pneumothorax than catheterization of the jugular vein or the femoral vein.

It has had a considerable scientific impact (742 citations on Google Scholar) and contributed to modifying national and international recommendations (Timsit ICM 2018, Buetti ICHE 2022, O'Grady NEJM 2023) for the most invasive procedure performed in intensive care.

In the respiratory distress of people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), a bacterial infection is not always to blame.

The PHRC of 2010 proposed to evaluate the benefit of antibiotic therapy guided by procalcitonin (PCT) on the morbidity and mortality of patients with COPD hospitalized in intensive care for exacerbation with or without associated pneumonia.

With 302 patients included, 30 patients (20%) in the PCT group and 21 patients (14%) in the control group died within 3 months of admission. The durations of exposure to antibiotics in intensive care were similar between the PCT group and the control group. The PCT algorithm was not non-inferior and did not reduce the duration of antibiotic therapy in the context tested (Daubin, ICM 2018).

This study with a high level of evidence and significant scientific impact (100 citations on Google Scholar) contributed to modifying national and international recommendations (Schuetz CCLM 2019).