(PHILADELPHIA, PA) -- The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded Temple University Hospital's Department of Emergency Medicine a $1 million grant to participate as a primary clinical study site in the Neurological Emergencies Treatment Trials (NETT) Network.
The NETT Network initiative is designed to facilitate high-quality clinical trials in multiple types of emergency neurological disorders affecting adults or children. The NETT network will bring together 11 national sites to perform wide-scale clinical trials testing the effectiveness of new treatments for neurological emergencies, which include traumatic brain injuries, seizures, stroke, meningitis, and spinal cord injuries.
Each year, approximately 15 million adults and children visit the emergency department for acute neurological disorders. It is critical to provide optimal care during the first hours of neurological emergencies, which are mostly assessed and treated by emergency physicians.
Temple University Hospital will serve as a clinical hub for this five-year study series; and will establish Phila-NETT, which includes Temple-Episcopal, Temple University Children's Medical Center, Northeastern Hospital, and Hahnemann Hospital as additional sites. This collaborative, multi-disciplinary effort involves emergency physicians, neurologists, neurosurgeons, interventional radiologists, rehabilitation therapists, and pediatricians.
"Together, we will be a clinical network to recruit, evaluate, and treat patients with neurological emergencies," said Dr. Nina Gentile, Associate Professor, Department of Emergency Medicine, Temple University Hospital, and principal investigator of this project. "We're very excited about this grant because, in emergency medicine, we often have limited time to decide on the best way to treat patients. These studies will help us further define the right choices."
Gentile said the goals of the investigation are three-fold: to facilitate high-quality clinical trials in several different types of emergency neurological disorders; to encourage collaboration between emergency medicine physicians and neurological disease specialists in trial design and execution; and to facilitate the implementation of new therapies into clinical practice.
Another key objective of the project is to provide education to a variety of medical professionals, including emergency physicians, neurological specialists, community physicians, and EMTs. "We will collaborate and share resources with other hospitals and medical professionals," said Gentile. "This is an opportunity to create an infrastructure to work collectively in studies to accurately diagnose and effectively treat neurological disorders."
Personnel at each institution will use sophisticated telemedicine systems for communication and data collection, including user-friendly, web-based technology.
According to Gentile, Temple was selected as an optimal hub site for these study opportunities for several reasons. "We service such ethnically and racially diverse communities, some of which are often under-represented in clinical studies. Temple also has expertise in neurological emergencies and significant experience in neurological clinical trials."
The NETT network research will begin with a study to determine the safety and effectiveness of intramuscular administration of a medication by paramedics prior to ED arrival; and a study to determine the effects of blood pressure management for intra-cerebral hemorrhage, Gentile explained. "We will be able to determine interventions to better treat these patients, and will follow their care to assess treatment effectiveness."
Temple University Hospital (TUH) is one of Philadelphia's premier academic medical centers, providing a comprehensive array of inpatient and outpatient services, as well as highly specialized tertiary services, to the Delaware Valley and beyond. A 657-bed teaching hospital located on Temple University's Health Sciences Center campus in Philadelphia, TUH provides advanced healthcare to more than 24,000 inpatients and 200,000 outpatients each year. With the region's most established and respected cardiology and cardiac surgery programs, as well as a nationally-ranked pulmonary medicine program, orthopedics and sports medicine, neurosurgery, obstetrics-gynecology, gastroenterology and burn center, Temple provides an environment for the best patient care, physician training and research. Temple University Hospital physicians are associated with the Temple University School of Medicine. Their teaching, research and clinical activities, in addition to Temple's sophisticated facilities and equipment, result in development of innovative treatment options for a variety of the most complex diseases.