 |
| PIBW is based on height, not weight. |
Following my usual procedure, I read the title and abstract of the methods of this article on Intraoperative Low Tidal Volume Ventilation in this week's NEJM, and I made a wager with myself on what the outcome would be. Because there are both biological plausibility and biological precedent for low tidal volume, and because it is one of the few interventions in critical care in which I have supreme confidence (yes, you can conclude that I'm biased), my prior probability for this intervention is high and I wagered that the study would be positive. If you have not already done so, read the methods in the abstract and make your own wager before you read on.
This trial is solid but not bombproof. Outcomes assessors were blinded and so were post-operative care providers, but anesthesiologists administering tidal volumes were not. Outcomes themselves, while mostly based on consensus definitions (sometimes a consensus of collective ignorance), are susceptible to ascertainment and misclassification biases. The outcome was a composite, something that I like, as will be elaborated in a now published letter in AJRCCM. A composite outcome allows an additive effect between component outcomes and effectively increases study power. This is essential in a study such as this, where only 400 patients were enrolled and the study had "only" 80% power to detect a reduction in the primary outcome from 20% to 10%. As we have shown, detecting a difference of this magnitude in mortality is a difficult task indeed, and most critical care studies seeking such a difference are effectively underpowered. How many effective (in some aspect other than mortality) therapies have been dismissed because of this systemic underpowering in critical care research is anybody's guess.
