Anna Kathryn Barker, MD, PhD

Research Project:
Evaluating Paralytics Use Among Patients with Frequent Breath Stacking

Grant Awarded:

Catalyst Award

Research Topics:

clinical research
computational biology
epidemiology
modeling

Research Disease:

ARDS

Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) affects a quarter million people in the United States annually. It has few treatments and a persistent 35 to 45 percent mortality rate. Patients on mechanical ventilation with severe ARDS are commonly started on paralytic medications to relax the patients’ muscles, although prior studies have conflicting results regarding their benefit. This is likely because paralytic medications benefit some patients but not others. One group thought to benefit from paralytics are patients with breath stacking, who struggle to match their breathing with the ventilator. This study will use innovative machine learning methods and large, new, datasets from ventilator and electronic health record data, to automatically identify patients with frequent breath stacking. The results would evaluate whether this group benefits from paralytic medications.

Page last updated: October 8, 2026

Anna Kathryn Barker, MD, PhD

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