About the Authors

Gilles Clermont

clermontg@upmc.edu

Affiliation CRISMA (Clinical Research, Investigation, and Systems Modeling of Acute Illness) Center, Department of Critical Care Medicine, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States of America

Lan Kong

Affiliations CRISMA (Clinical Research, Investigation, and Systems Modeling of Acute Illness) Center, Department of Critical Care Medicine, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States of America, Department of Biostatistics, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States of America

Lisa A. Weissfeld

Affiliations CRISMA (Clinical Research, Investigation, and Systems Modeling of Acute Illness) Center, Department of Critical Care Medicine, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States of America, Department of Biostatistics, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States of America

Judith R. Lave

Affiliation Department of Health Policy & Management, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States of America

Gordon D. Rubenfeld

Affiliation Department of Medicine, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Mark S. Roberts

Affiliations Department of Health Policy & Management, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States of America, Departments of Medicine and Industrial Engineering, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, United States of America

Alfred F. Connors Jr.

Affiliation Department of Medicine, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, United States of America

Gordon R. Bernard

Affiliation Department of Medicine, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, United States of America

B. Taylor Thompson

Affiliation Department of Medicine, Harvard University, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America

Arthur P. Wheeler

Affiliation Department of Medicine, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, United States of America

Derek C. Angus

Affiliations CRISMA (Clinical Research, Investigation, and Systems Modeling of Acute Illness) Center, Department of Critical Care Medicine, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States of America, Department of Biostatistics, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States of America, Department of Health Policy & Management, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States of America

for the NHLBI ARDS Clinical Trials Network

Competing Interests

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: GC GDR MSR DCA JRL. Performed the experiments: GRB APW BTT AFC. Analyzed the data: LK LAW. Wrote the paper: GC DCA.