Over 500 patients have now been recruited to the RECOVERY-RS trial! Thank you to everyone involved for all your hard work at sites and to patients & families for your generous participation.

A big thank you to everyone who joined the recent site teleconferences for RECOVERY-RS. We appreciate all of your feedback and hope you found these sessions useful & informative. Recruitment has been phenomenal these last few weeks and we have now reached a total of 509 patients recruited! Thank you to all involved.

Thanks again to Dr Messer & Dr Rostron for sharing their local experiences during the meeting of recruiting to RECOVERY-RS and how they have overcome challenges to embed the trial in to their clinical pathways. Thank you also to Dr Stephen Webb at Royal Papworth who provided really insightful comments yesterday regarding his altered view on CPAP. Experience during the second wave has shown concerns from ECMO centres about barotrauma from prolonged CPAP/NIV. This has led to a change in NHS guidance regarding ECMO criteria. Prolonged use of CPAP therefore may preclude option for ECMO leading to potential harm for CPAP. The only way to resolve these uncertainties is in a trial setting and through recruitment to RECOVERY-RS which will provide us with the evidence we need.

Summary minutes from the teleconferences will be circulated in the near future.

- Recording from TC held 24 Nov 20: https://files.warwick.ac.uk/eskilton/files/RECOVERY-RS+recordings/Site+TC+24Nov20+recording.mp4

- Slides from the TC meeting

- Local poster used at Heartlands (patient cards & poster) to assist with recruitment as a useful tool

- Trial certificate of appreciation to use to award trainees/staff involved in the study

- Slides from a recent TRIC & RAFT trainee meeting to share amongst trainee colleagues. Trainees can be critical to helping capture patients early on in their clinical pathway. A recording of Prof Gavin Perkins delivering these slides can be found here: https://files.warwick.ac.uk/eskilton/files/RECOVERY-RS+recordings/RECOVERY-RS+RAFT++TRIC+presentation+recording_23Nov20_.mp4

As a reminder all trial documentation including other aid memoirs can be downloaded from our trial website: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/med/research/ctu/trials/recovery-rs/sitestaff/ 

An article was recently published in The Times emphasising the need for RECOVERY-RS to resolve doubts around the best respiratory support to provide to COVID-19 patients. Clinical equipoise at sites to essential to provide us with the answers we need.

RECOVERY-RS is the only large trial investigating whether intervening with CPAP and delivering oxygen under pressure into the nose really do speed recovery times and reduce the need for people to be intubated.

Read more here: bit.ly/36MYYBC

Phil was hospitalised with COVID-19 in early April 2020. Struggling to breathe, he was grateful to have the chance to take part in the RECOVERY-RS trial and hoped he would be able to help other people as a result. He tells his story here.

As part of the COVID-19 NIHR Research Voices series, Dr Jay Naisbitt, PI at Fairfield General Hospital and Consultant in Intensive Care medicine provides an insight in to the benefits of participating in RECOVERY-RS. Integrating this trial into routine clinical practice has facilitated patient recruitment and boosted morale across the team.

Dr Naisbitt explains it was clear the evidence base supports a position of equipoise (where it is unknown which treatment is likely to be better). When the team first took part in this research in April they had thought CPAP would be the way forward but now there is uncertainty which treatment will prove to have the best outcome for patients. Therefore, it is important to take part in this trial to overcome innate bias and provide the real evidence we need to inform decisions and treatments regarding ventilation strategies for COVID-19 patients.

Read more here: https://www.nihr.ac.uk/blog/covid19researchvoices-the-multi-fold-benefits-of-integrating-research-in-standard-care/25145 

RECOVERY-RS is supported and funded by the NIHR. The trial is considered an urgent public health study by the UK's Chief Medical Officers and is supported by the Intensive Care Society and the British Thoracic Society.

If you are unsure whether you can take part in RECOVERY-RS as a site watch this video for further information and contact recovery-rs@warwick.ac.uk today to express your interest in becoming a site.