Covid-19 update

Dear TTM2 friends,
 
We hope that all of you are well in these troubled times.
 
The Covid-19 outbreak increasingly affects the sites of the TTM2-network. Many of you are struggling to handle the difficult situation or preparing for the worst. Special thoughts to our Italian friends, we can only imagine what you are going through.
 
Thanks to you, the TTM2-trial is the largest cohort of intensive care treated CA-patients and the information obtained from our detailed follow-up is an invaluable source to develop post-arrest care for the future.
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, we need to adapt to capture as much information as possible about the surviving patients’ health and function. At most sites, face-to-face follow must be abandoned for safety reasons. We therefore recommend a temporary switch to telephone follow-up until the situation has stabilised. Detailed instructions for the telephone follow-up are available at www.ttm2trial.org (Documents / Follow up / Telephone follow up manual). 
 
We suggest that you inform the participants that you would like to invite them to a later face-to-face follow up visit at the hospital, when the situation allows, to perform those tests that cannot be performed over the phone (some items of the MoCA, SDMT, TST, blood sampling, and some substudy tests.
If a patient is unable to participate in the telephone follow-up, try to obtain as much information as possible from a relative or proxy.
 
The 24 month follow-up time-point will be extended to 24 months + 3months to increase the number of possible face-to-face follow ups within the time-frame (follow-up at a later time-point is of course better than no follow-up).
 
We understand that it may be difficult to allocate sufficient resources to capture these important data during the crisis and we are very grateful for any data you may be able to collect. Do not hesitate to contact  gisela.lilja@med.lu.se to discuss solutions and receive support. Together we are a very strong network!
 
Warmest regards to all of you,
 
Niklas and the coordinating team