The Lorenzo Berra Research Group

About the Group

The Berra Clinical research Group, led by Lorenzo Berra, MD, medical director of respiratory care at Massachusetts General Hospital and investigator in the Anesthesia Center for Critical Care Research, focuses on translating highly innovative laboratory research to large animal research and first in-human research to improve diagnosis, monitoring and treatment of critically ill patients. Our most recent efforts are focused to:

• Assess nitric oxide (NO) gas therapy to prevent organ (kidney, lung, heart and brain) injury mediated by ischemia and by cell-free heme as it occurs following cardiac arrest, cardiac surgery, blood transfusions or hemoglobin-based oxygen carrier
• Evaluate feasibility, safety and efficacy of prolonged (and home) delivery of continuous, low dose of NO gas therapy to patients with chronic pulmonary hypertension
• Test safety and efficacy of in-hospital short and repeated sessions of high dose treatments with NO gas breathing in severe lung infection
• Improve cardio-pulmonary mechanical support in patients with cardio-pulmonary failure by integration of novel bedside cardio-pulmonary monitoring (e.g., electrical impedance tomography, lung-heart ultrasound) with physiological data (e.g., regional ventilation, V/Q perfusion, pleural pressure)