The Stimulation Ventilation Study
Research type
Research Study
Full title
The Stimulation Ventilation Study
IRAS ID
190282
Contact name
Philip Pemberton
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
R&D Department Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 2 months, 4 days
Research summary
Recent studies have demonstrated that it may be possible to reduce the amount of muscle loss that occurs in the main breathing muscle whilst patients in intensive care are on breathing machines. Reduction of this muscle loss is achieved by stimulation of the main muscle of breathing, the diaphragm. This was initially done with the use of electrical stimulation, a mode of stimulation that can be quite painful and requires the surgical implanting of stimulating electrodes. More recently magnets have been shown to be able to provide the necessary stimulation but are able to do so in non-invasive and painless way.
When placed directly over the nerves that supply the diaphragm (the phrenic nerves), magnetic stimulation is able to cause contraction of this muscle. Generally one brief twitch of the muscle is produced at a time for the purpose of measuring the strength of the diaphragm.
However it may be possible to use these magnets to stimulate the diaphragm to mimic normal breathing. In order to do this the settings of the magnet stimulator need to be evaluated whilst measuring various aspects of breathing and diaphragm contraction.We plan to assess healthy volunteers whilst stimulating their phrenic nerves using different settings of a magnetic stimulator to find the optimal settings that are able to comfortably mimic normal breathing.
These settings can then be used in further studies on patients on breathing machines in intensive care to see if we can reduce the muscle loss in the diaphragm that occurs.REC name
West Midlands - Coventry & Warwickshire Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
15/WM/0424
Date of REC Opinion
18 Dec 2015
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion