Partnerships

The Partnership's flagship project, the POLAR trial, aims to establish how to best, and safely, support the fragile lungs of premature babies at birth.

This trial will compare two commonly used respiratory strategies that both use gentle pressure to open the lungs. The trial will assess whether a brief period of higher oxygen pressure at birth, called PEEP (positive end expiratory pressure), which is adjusted to the oxygen and breathing needs of the baby, helps premature babies immediately after birth, and improves their survival without chronic lung disease, compared with the current typical newborn resuscitation practice of a using a lower, unchanging level of PEEP (commonly referred to as static PEEP).

Through this we hope to give guidance to clinicians that can be easily, rapidly, and cheaply be translated into everyday practice.

The James Lind Alliance (JLA) is a non-profit making initiative, established in 2004. It brings patients, carers, and clinicians together in Priority Setting Partnership's (PSPs). These PSPs identify and prioritise evidence uncertainties, or unanswered questions, that patients, carers, and clinicians agree are the most important.

The aim of this exercise is to help ensure that those who fund health research are aware of what really matters to the people who need to use the research in their everyday lives.

The specific aim of our PSP exercise is to prioritise the most important questions for the most premature of infants born <25 weeks of gestation.

NeoGASTRIC aims to determine whether routinely measuring gastric residual volumes (checking what is in the stomach before feeding) helps premature babies safely get to full feeds more quickly, without increasing harm.

NeoGASTRIC is coordinated by the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit, Clinical Trials Unit (NPEU CTU) at the University of Oxford, England, UK, in partnership with Monash University, Australia. The study is funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) in the UK and the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) in Australia.

This trial will be the largest individually randomised trial in neonates ever run in the world. To answer our research question, premature babies will either have no routine gastric residual volumes measured, or have gastric residual volumes measured regularly. The two approaches being compared are already used on premature babies across the UK and Australia. Approximately 7040 babies will be recruited onto the trial from multiple hospitals in the UK and four large hospitals in Australia.

Through this, we hope that the results improve neonatal care internationally.