Have you or someone you know experienced a traumatic brain injury?

Wayne State University (through Detroit Receiving Hospital) is conducting a study of the emergency treatment of patients with severe traumatic brain injury.

Wayne State University has joined a partnership of 44 other hospitals across North America to study and compare two strategies standardly used for monitoring and treating children and adults with severe traumatic brain injury in the intensive care unit. The study will determine if one or the other strategy is more likely to help patients get better. The name of the study is the Brain Oxygen Optimization in Severe Traumatic Brain Injury, or BOOST3. It is sponsored by the National Institutes of Health.

Patients eligible for BOOST3 will be comatose and unable to say whether or not they wish to participate in the study. A special set of government rules allow studies to include parents with an “except on from informed consent” under these circumstances. This is only allowed in life-threatening circumstances, where the best strategy is unknown, when there is a potential benefit to participants, and when it is not possible to get consent from the parents, families or representatives before the study strategies need to begin.

Wayne State University will hold community meetings to provide information about this proposed study, answer questions and hear community feedback.

If you are interested in attending a meeting about the BOOST3 Study, or in having someone speak to your community group, please contact study coordinator Farhan Ayaz, M.D., at farhanayaz@wayne.edu or 313-888-2162.

For more information about BOOST3, visit: boost3trial.org.