Non-invasive ventilation (NIV) is a treatment that uses positive pressure delivered via a face mask or mouthpiece to assist a person to breathe. It can be used as a long-term treatment for people whose breathing has failed - usually due to chronic conditions that produce weakness of the respiratory muscles (i.e. motor neurone disease [MND] or muscular dystrophy) or in those with severe loss of lung function (i.e. from emphysema or cystic fibrosis). Most people use this treatment at night as people with weakness of their breathing muscles or chronic lung disease are most susceptible to unstable breathing during sleep. Even though the treatment may improve survival and function for these people, many are unable to use it for more than 4 hours per day (which is considered a threshold amount of use in order to gain a benefit) and many others are unable to tolerate it at all. Our team has recently provided evidence that specific and individualised tweaking of NIV settings leads to better outcomes in people with MND. This previous trial determined that the use of a sleep study can improve the way people are set up with NIV when they first start to use it. The next step is to replicate these results in a large, multi-centre study conducted at 7 sites across Australia. We hope reproduce results supporting the use of sleep studies on important outcomes for people that need NIV. Additionally, this multi-centre RCT will include a 12-month follow-up period to evaluate longer-term outcomes, such as survival.
This study is looking to recruit people with MND aged 18 years or older who are about to be prescribed long-term NIV. Interested to find out more? Please contact Interested to find out more? Please contact Professor David Berlowitz (email: ; phone:+613 9496 3871).
A multi-centre randomised controlled trial of polysomnographic titration of non-invasive ventilation in motor neurone disease
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