Evaluating the efficacy of dexamethasone in the treatment of patients with persistent acute respiratory distress syndrome: study protocol for a randomized controlled trial.

Background Although much has evolved in our understanding of the pathogenesis and factors affecting outcome of patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), still there is no specific pharmacologic treatment for ARDS. Several clinical trials have evaluated the utility of corticoids but none of them has demonstrated a definitive benefit due to small sample sizes, selection bias, patient heterogeneity, and time of initiation of treatment or duration of therapy. We postulated that adjunctive treatment of persistent ARDS with intravenous dexamethasone might change the pulmonary and systemic inflammatory response and thereby reduce morbidity, leading to a decrease in duration of mechanical ventilation and a decrease in mortality.