London, June 11, 2007

At this year's Congress of the European Society of Anaesthesiology (ESA), Euroanaesthesia 2007, in Munich, the ESA presented the first Drager Award for Intensive Care Medicine. The 10,000 Euro endowment was donated by Drager Medical AG & Co. KG. The award went to the working group studying Ventilation-associated Lung Injury in the Department of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena.


During the opening ceremony, Sir Peter Simpson, President of the ESA, together with Helge Hussy, General Manager of Drager Medical Deutschland GmbH, presented the award to Dr Lars Hater, representing this working group.


The prize

This annual prize honours significant research in the field of intensive care medicine published in peer-reviewed intensive care or anaesthesiology journals in the preceding year.
The prize is given to the institution that produces the article rather than any one research worker. This year, the Scientific Programme Committee of the ESA who judged the prize recognised this working group for their investigation of Ventilation-associated Lung Injury under the direction of Dr Torsten Schreiber. The related article was entitled, Increased Susceptibility to Ventilator-associated Lung Injury Persists after Clinical Recovery from Experimental Endotoxemia.


With this prize, Drager wishes to honour scientific endeavors and support advances in the field of critical care medicine.


The award recipients

Dr Schreiber's working group in Jena has been conducting experiments for a number of years in the field of ventilation-induced or ventilation-associated lung injury. In complex in vivo models, the working group has studied the factors and conditions influencing the damaging effects of artificial ventilation.
Clinically relevant situations are simulated, with the study concentrating on the effects of different ventilation parameters (e.g., tidal volume or PEEP level) on the pulmonary and systemic inflammatory response.
In their distinguished work, the researchers demonstrated that even after recovery from a transient period of endotoxemia, susceptibility to the deleterious effects of increasing tidal volumes increases over time. This suggests that lower tidal volumes, already known to protect patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) are also of benefit after full clinical recovery from the inflammatory response.

 

Founding of the ESA

The European Society for Anaesthesiology (ESA) is dedicated to anaesthesiology as well as intensive care, emergency medicine, and pain therapy. The aim of the society is to strengthen all these areas of clinical practice in Europe and to promote the spread of knowledge among anaesthetic experts throughout the world. As Chairman of the Drager Prize Subcommittee, Prof Jennifer M. Hunter MB ChB PhD FRCA, School of Clinical Science (Anaesthesia), University of Liverpool, UK, stated that this paper was selected as it showed the highest standard of scientific study of all the submissions, with results that were most likely to affect future clinical practice. The subcommittee was very satisfied with the quality of the applications and hopes that next year even more critical care papers will be submitted.

 


1. Head of the working group: Dr Torsten Schreiber; members: Dr Lars H?ter, Dr Konrad Schwarzkopf , all of the Hospital for Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena and PD Dr Waheedullah Karzai, Deptm. of Anaesthesia, Zentralklinik Bad Berka GmbH.
2.First published in: Anesthesiology 2006, 104: 133?41
3. See: Schreiber T., H?ter L., Gaser E., Schmidt B., Schwarzkopf K., Karzai W.: Effects of a catecholamine-induced increase in cardiac output on lung injury after experimental unilateral pulmonary acid instillation Crit Care Med. 2007 May 22, epub ahead of print; Schreiber T., Swanson PE., Chang KC., Davis CC., Dunne WM., Karl IE., Reinhart K., Hotchkiss RS.,: Both gram-negative and gram-positive experimental pneumonia induce profound lymphocyte but not respiratory epithelial cell apoptosis. Shock. 2006 Sep;26(3):271-6.; Schreiber T., Niemann C., Schmidt B., Karzai W.: A novel model of selective lung ventilation to investigate the long-term effects of ventilation-induced lung injury. Shock. 2006 Jul;26(1):50-4.; Schreiber T., H?ter L., Gaser E., Schmidt B., Schwarzkopf K., Rek H., Karzai W.: PEEP has beneficial effects on inflammation in the injured and no deleterious effects on the noninjured lung after unilateral lung acid instillation. Intensive Care Med. 2006 May;32(5):740-9