Investigators at the University of Colorado are committed to quality, evidence-based care of patients in the intensive care unit. They are based at the University of Colorado Hospital, Anschutz Medical Campus. Faculty members are active participants in a number of investigator-initiated studies supported by the National Institutes of Health.  

Many of these studies are multi-site, multi-investigator projects, including membership in the prestigious Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome Network (ARDSNet), where University of Colorado faculty members interact on a national level with other investigators in projects focused on developing therapies for ARDS.  Additionally, the critical care research group has developed a consortium of Denver area hospitals to facilitate the on-going performance of ICU-focused clinical trials.  

Consortium sites include St. Anthony’s Central, Denver Health, Swedish Medical Center, and Rose Medical Center.  In this way, a large, diverse patient population can be involved in clinical trials. Several major topics for critical care research by this group include: therapies and pathophysiology of acute lung injury/acute respiratory distress syndrome, therapy for critical illness polymyoneuropathy, influence of alcohol abuse on the development of critical illness and its effect on long term outcomes, and the effect of blood transfusion in patients with advanced liver disease.