Acute circulatory failure (ACF) and shock affect ~30% of intensive care unit (ICU) patients and occurs when the heart and circulation cannot perfuse critical organs to support their function. Adding fluid is the primary treatment to restore perfusion. However, only 50% of fluid interventions are effective. The rest have deleterious or no effect.

There is a critical need to develop a clinically feasible, low-cost means to determine which patients will respond to fluid, and which will not.

PerFluid will develop a novel model-based method to continuously measure stressed-blood volume to assess perfusion, and thus personalise fluid therapy treatment of ACF patients in the ICU.  We will combine physiological models and currently available measurements to capture currently unmeasurable key physiological parameters in real-time – in particular stressed blood volume and perfusion.  This metric will be combined with a novel, yet simple clinical protocol for validation in clinical proof-of-concept tests.

Using only currently available measurements makes PerFluid far more clinically feasible. The protocol is designed to integrate seamlessly with typical care practice, so no work is added. Digitally driven, it is potentially very low cost, with significant potential to address the high mortality and cost of ACF by personalising and optimising care.