Paediatric anaesthesia & critical care
Gastric Residual Volume Assessment in Critically Ill Children: The GASTRIC-PICU Randomized Clinical Trial
An erratum to this article was published (JAMA, 13 Oct 2026 ↗)
Primary result · Survival and days free from mechanical ventilation at 30 days (clinical co-primary)Result — go to the resultAdjusted odds ratio 0.95 95% CI 0.86–1.05Authors' conclusion
Among critically ill children being enterally fed, not assessing GRV routinely was noninferior to regular assessments every 6 hours and significantly increased nutritional achievement at 72 hours.
Study context
- Population
- Children aged 0 to 16 years receiving invasive ventilation and starting enteral feeds, 23 pediatric intensive care units (PICUs) in the UK and 1 in Switzerland4,460 ITT analysed
- Participants
- 4,700 children
- Comparison
- No routine gastric residual volume (GRV) assessment vs usual care
- No routine GRV assessmentn = 2,352
- Usual caren = 2,348reference
- Primary endpoint
- Clinical co-primary (noninferiority): composite of survival and days free from mechanical ventilation; nutritional co-primary (superiority): percentage meeting energy requirements by 72 hours
- Follow-up
- 30 days
Methodological detailspragmatic, multicentre, noninferiority
- Pragmatic
- Multicentre
- Noninferiority
Primary result
As reported in the abstract
Survival and days free from mechanical ventilation at 30 days (clinical co-primary)
Adjusted odds ratio
0.95
95% CI 0.86–1.05
By group
No routine GRV assessment vs Usual care
aOR 0.95 (95% CI 0.86–1.05)
Further findings
Mean
| Outcome | No routine GRV assessment | Usual care | Adjusted mean difference (percentage points) (95% CI) | P value | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mean % of energy requirements achieved (nutritional co-primary, superiority) · 72 hours | 80.3% | 76.8% | 3.2 (1.3–5.2) | P < 0.001 | |
| −50510Difference, percentage points (linear scale) |
Survival and days free from mechanical ventilation (per-protocol analysis) · 30 days
- Per-protocol results consistent with ITT analysis; adjusted OR
- 1.01 (0.90-1.13) (95% CI)
Original publication
Gastric Residual Volume Assessment in Critically Ill Children: The GASTRIC-PICU Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA. Published 8 September 2026. doi:10.
Composed by AI from the published abstract and checked against it. How Briefs are made →