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Approval granted to commence the trial in late 2003. The trial is conducted with the oversight of an independant data and safety monitoring board.

This project aims to investigate the effects of additional exercise and a standardised orientation intervention on the development of delirium in hospital.

Continuous infusions of sedatives are commonly used in Australian Intensive Care Units (ICUs) to provide patient comfort and promote tolerance of ICU treatment. These infusions are occasionally stopped to allow patients to return to consciousness to enable assessment of their neurological function and sedation requirements. A routine daily interruption to sedation has been recommended as a standard of care in ICU patients (Dellinger, Crit Care Med, 2004). This recommendation is based on the work of Kress (NEJM, 2000) who enrolled 180 patients in a medical ICU in Chicago. Several aspects of this work significantly reduce the appropriateness of generalising these results to Australian ICU practice. Fully exploring the impact of a daily interruption to sedation is warranted in the context of Australian ICU practice prior to its adoption as a standard of care. In this pilot study, the standard practice of interruption to sedation on an ad-hoc basis will be compared to a routine interruption to sedation for a defined period each day in Australian ICUs. These comparisons will be based on the length of time that mechanical ventilation, ICU and hospital treatment is required and psychological well being 6 months after discharge from ICU. All patients enrolled in the study will be given an infusion replacing their prescribed sedation for a defined period each day. The replacement infusions will be either normal saline or identical to the patients prescribed sedation. This pilot study will test the proposed blinding procedures and facilitate an appropriate power calculation.

In this study we are testing a public health intervention to reduce the incidence of childhood asthma. The two interventions that we are testing, that is housedust mite allergen avoidance and omega-3 fatty acid supplementation, are based on the strongest risk factors for asthma that have been identified in observational studies to date. This is the first trial in the world to test whether interventions directed at a potent causative factor (housedust mite allergens) or a protective factor (omega-3 fatty acids) can halt or reverse the increasing prevalence of childhood asthma. If either of these interventions is effective, we will have the potential for the very first time to significantly reduce the incidence of asthma in young children.