Imperial’s researchers were central to efforts to evaluate treatments for critically ill patients with COVID-19 during the pandemic.
 
Professor Anthony Gordon, from the Department of Surgery & Cancer, is UK Chief Investigator for the international REMAP-CAP trial. One of the key findings to emerge from the study was that treating COVID-19 patients in intensive care with corticosteroids (such as hydrocortisone) reduced their risk of death and the length of time they received organ support.
 
These findings were rapidly incorporated into treatment recommendations for COVID-19 by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), and corticosteroids have become the standard of care for patients around the world, improving survival in the sickest patients and saving hundreds of thousands of lives. REMAP-CAP has continued to find other treatments that have been crucial to tackling severe COVID-19.