TEAM: A Trial of Early Activity and Mobility in ICU

Patients who are admitted and treated in the intensive care unit (ICU) generally have potentially reversible critical illness. While many patients survive, substantial proportions of patients fail to recover completely and do not return to their pre-morbid level of health. Critically ill patients receive mechanical ventilation, as a lifesaving intervention, but this is routinely managed with deep sedation and immobility, which results in prolonged periods of bed rest. Severe muscle weakness, termed ICUAW, is common and associated with prolonged duration of mechanical ventilation and hospital stay in the ICU, as well as poor recovery of physical function. Early mobilisation, exercising patients while they are still receiving mechanical ventilation, has been proposed as a candidate intervention to prevent ICU acquired weakness (ICUAW). Observational studies indicate that early mobilisation is not used routinely in critically ill patients in Australia and New Zealand. TEAM is a pilot RCT designed to obtain data to assist in the planning of an adequately powered RCT that will test the hypothesis that early mobilisation of critically ill patients improves one or more functional outcomes, quality of survival, and proportion of patients who survive.