Medtronic has announced preliminary results from its PRODIGY study that found more than 40% of patients on the general care floor experienced opioid-induced respiratory depression (OIRD), which is significantly higher than previously reported in clinical literature.

The PRODIGY (PRediction of Opioid-induced respiratory Depression In patients monitored by capnoGraphY) study is a Medtronic-sponsored, prospective, multi-center study to identify people at high risk for OIRD, a form of respiratory compromise.

Study results also demonstrated that investigators were able to develop an easy-to-use risk prediction tool to identify patients at high risk of developing respiratory compromise.

One goal of the study was to develop and internally validate an accurate risk assessment scoring tool – the PRODIGY score. The PRODIGY score identifies adults on the hospital general care floor receiving opioid medication who are at increased risk for OIRD.

Variables used to develop the risk assessment score included age, gender, sleep disorders, chronic heart failure and opioid naïvety. The PRODIGY score performed well, identifying 76% of patients with confirmed respiratory depression (AUC=0.7620).

“Clinical evidence shows that acute and unexpected respiratory compromise on the general care floor is increasingly common. Until now, we have not been successful in predicting which patients are at high risk when recovering on the general care floor,” said Ashish K. Khanna, MD, primary study investigator and an associate professor of anesthesiology and intensivist at the Wake Forest School of Medicine.

“These data validate an easy-to-use OIRD risk prediction tool to identify patients at the highest risk and guide early intervention using continuous capnography-based monitoring. Early identification and intervention in these high-risk patients has the potential to improve patient safety and decrease the economic and clinical burden of unplanned ICU admissions.”