At this year's Congress of the European Society of Anaesthesiology (ESA), Euroanaesthesia 2009, in Milan, the ESA presented for the third time the “Dräger Award for Intensive Care Medicine”. The 10,000 Euro prize was donated by Dräger. The award went to the working group1 studying “Effects of ventilation with 100% oxygen during early hyperdynamic porcine fecal peritonitis” in the Department of Anesthesiology, University Hospital Ulm, Germany. During the opening ceremony, Professor Dr Benedikt Pannen, Chairman of the ESA Scientific Programme Committee, together with Oliver Rosenthal, Head of Dräger Strategic Business Field Anaesthesiology, presented the award to Professor Dr Dr Peter Radermacher, representing this working group. 

The prize

This annual prize honors significant European research in the field of intensive care medicine. The prize is given to the anaesthetic or intensive care department that produces the article rather than any one research worker. This year, the Dräger Prize subcommittee of the ESA who judged the prize recognized this working group for their investigation of the effects of pure O2 ventilation on organ function and tissue injury during septic shock. With this prize, Dräger wishes to honor scientific endeavors and support advances in the field of critical care medicine. 

The award recipients

Prof Radermacher´s working group investigated the effects of pure O2 breathing as a putative adjunct to early goal directed therapy of septic shock. This had not been done before, since ventilation with 100% O2 during sepsis is referred to being potentially harmful as a result of enhanced oxidative stress. In a clinically relevant long-term porcine model of well-resuscitated septic shock resulting from fecal peritonitis, ventilation with 100% O2 improved organ function and attenuated tissue injury without affecting lung function and oxidative or nitrosative stress. 

As Chairman of the Dräger Prize Subcommittee, Prof Dr Benedikt Pannen, Director of the Department of Anaesthesia at the University Hospital Duesseldorf (Germany), stated that this paper was selected as it evaluated the impact of a simple intervention, namely the ventilation with 100 % oxygen, under experimental conditions of sepsis that could become highly relevant to the clinical scenario.

From left to right: 

Prof Dr Benedikt Pannen, Chairman of the ESA Scientific Programme Committee; Prof Dr Dr Peter Radermacher representing the working group received the prize; Oliver Rosenthal, Head of Dräger Strategic Business Field Anaesthesiology.

Courtesy of Drager