DECS-II trial: Dexamethasone for Cardiac Surgery-II

The DECS-II trial is a multicentre, pragmatic, assessor-blinded, randomised trial of dexamethasone (1mg/kg, single dose) versus placebo, in patients undergoing cardiac surgery, employing a novel, highly efficient trial design. The trial will evaluate whether high-dose dexamethasone has a patient-centered benefit of enhancing recovery and increasing the number of days at home after cardiac surgery.

Principal investigator: Professor Paul Myles, Dr Stefan Dieleman and Dr Lieke Verheije.

Recruitment to the DECS-II trial has now been published. A total of 1956 patients were recruited to the study.

ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT03002259

1400 patients from Australia and 1400 patients from Utrecht, Netherlands.

Myles PS, Dieleman JM, Forbes A, Heritier S, Smith JA. Dexamethasone for Cardiac Surgery trial (DECS-II): Rationale and a novel, practice preference-randomized consent design. Am Heart J. 2018 Oct;204:52-57. doi: 10.1016/j.ahj.2018.06.008. Epub 2018 Jun 21. PMID: 30081275.