PHILADELPHIA – Carrie Sims MD, MS, FACS, assistant professor of Surgery in the division of Traumatology and Surgical Critical Care at Penn Medicine, is the recipient of a $125,000 research grant from the National Trauma Institute (NTI). Sims’ study is one of seven awarded grants this month by NTI, a non-profit organization dedicated to funding trauma research in the United States.
Sims will investigate the impact of using vasopressin vs. normal saline during the resuscitation of severely injured trauma patients. Massive resuscitation is associated with a decrease in vasopressin—a hormone needed to support blood pressure during hemorrhagic shock. While giving vasopressin in high doses has been shown to improve blood pressure, decrease blood loss and improve survival in animal models, clinical studies investigating its use in trauma patients are limited to case reports.
“The AVERT Shock trial is essential because trauma remains the leading cause of death for those under the age of 40 in the United States, with a large percentage of patients dying from hemorrhagic shock,” says Sims. “If using hormone supplementation proves beneficial, it will dramatically change the way trauma patients are routinely resuscitated.”
NTI is committed to facilitating translational research—that is, research whose results may affect the practice of medicine and patient outcomes in the near-term. Sims’ study and the other six funded by NTI will get under way this year and may be completed in as little as one year. Preliminary results from the principal investigators may be presented at the NTI’s Annual Trauma Symposium as early as 2011.
Sims received her medical degree from the University of California, San Francisco and completed her surgical residency at the Massachusetts General Hospital. She finished her trauma and critical care fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania and conducts translational research in conjunction with Penn’s Center for Resuscitation Science in the department of Emergency Medicine.
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