CAPOEIRA-I
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Cardiopulmonary exercise testing before and after intravenous iron: a prospective clinical study "CAPOEIRA-I STUDY: CArdio PulmOnary Exercise testing and IntRAvenous Iron"
IRAS ID
236799
Contact name
Michael PW Grocott
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 5 months, 21 days
Research summary
‘Red blood cells’ contain a chemical called ‘haemoglobin’, and this carries the oxygen from the lungs around the body. When the amount of haemoglobin is reduced, we say that a patient is ‘anaemic’. Anaemia can have many causes, but affectsa third of patients having big operations in hospital. After their operation these anaemic patients are more likely to suffer serious complications which may be fatal.
This might be because surgery makes the body do more ‘work’ to heal- and that needs more oxygen to be delivered. We use a special test to try to measure how likely people are to suffer complications after major operations. This test involves cycling on an exercise bike for approximately 10 minutes cardiopulmonary exercise test (CPET) and we measure lots of things that help us see how well the heart, the lungs and all of the muscles respond when they are under stress. People who are very anaemic tend to perform less well on this cycling test.
Anaemia is often due to a lack of iron, which helps make haemoglobin. Usually we get iron from foods such as red meat and spinach. Some conditions mean that patients lose iron, such as a tumour bleeding. Other illnesses make it difficult for the body to absorb iron from the gut in the first place. Both lead to a state of low iron in the body and eventually this leads to anaemia. One way to treat anaemia quickly before surgery is to give iron into the bloodstream (intra-venous). It is thought that this might reduce the risk of complications after surgery, but we do not know whether this is because it improves overall fitness, or for other reasons.
We have an established clinical set up that uses CPET and treats anaemia before major surgery. We have decided to carry out a study to find out if giving patients iron through a ‘drip’ and then repeating the cycling test 10 days later improves their CPET results (thus likely improving how well they do after surgery). We will also measure how much the total amount of haemoglobin goes up with iron treatment.This study is called Cardio Pulmonary Exercise Testing and Intravenous Iron or CAPOEIRA-I for short.
REC name
London - Surrey Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
17/LO/2061
Date of REC Opinion
8 Jan 2018
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion