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Our History

The Canadian Critical Care Trials Group (CCCTG) was created in 1989 to improve the care of critically ill patients through investigator-initiated research, and to provide a national forum for continuing education about research methods.

The inaugural meeting of the CCCTG was an open-invitation conference funded by the Medical Research Council of Canada (MRC) in Emerald Lake in September 1989 attended by approximately 25 people. Dr. Tom Todd became the first Chair and headed the group from 1989 to 1996 after which Dr. Deborah Cook took over until 2004.

The first project to be taken on by the group was the Stress Ulcer Prophylaxis Study and its first major publication “Risk factors for gastrointestinal bleeding in critically ill patients. Canadian Critical Care Trials Group” was published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1994.

In the spring of 2000, additional MRC funding was received for a special pediatric CCCTG meeting in Montreal – an indication of the growing number of multicentre pediatric ICU trials. The Pediatric Subgroup launched the same year.

In 2002, the Translational Biology subgroup of the CCCTG was founded to further develop the link between basic science and clinical research.

The Canadian Critical Care Research Coordinators Group, which has become an essential part of the trials group's work to increase capacity across Canada, was founded in 2004. 

A group of community and academic intensivists founded the Canadian Community ICU Research Network (CCIRNET) under the auspices of the CCCTG in 2019. 

Since 2020, CCCTG has led the COVID-19 Network of Clinical Trials Networks, which received $6M in support from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research on its initiation, and an additional $4M extension in 2022.

TO LEARN MORE about the origins of the CCCTG, download this 2009 article, "Investigator-led clinical research consortia: The Canadian Critical Care Trials Group," published in Critical Care Medicine.

TO LEARN MORE about multi centre clinical research in adult critical care, download this article published in the Critical Care Medicine.