Our fabulous Research Team celebrated Clinical Trials Day with morning tea yesterday. So much work happens behind the scenes every day to advance medical research and benefit the lives of those in our community. Here is an update of the latest activity in clinical trials:
New Trial in Anaesthetics
The VAPOR-C Trial recently commenced recruitment in Anaesthetics, with Dr Anthony Baird as NHW’s Principal Investigator. This trial is comparing inhalation and intravenous anaesthetic agents and their effect on cancer recurrence in patients having surgery for colorectal cancer. We have recruited 2 patients to this study so far, and expect to continue recruitment for a period of 2 years. Congratulations to Anthony and his team.
New Members to the Trials Team
We have welcomed two new members to the Clinical Trials team recently.
Jelena Dragovic has joined us as the Regional Clinical Trials Start Up Coordinator. This is a supportive role for the Australian Teletrials Program. Jelena will share her time in this role between NHW, Goulburn Valley Health and La Trobe Hospital.
Henkang Yan joins the team as a Clinical Trial Coordinator Intern through a program provided by the Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Centre and supported by Department of Health. Hengkang will spend 40 weeks at NHW to receive hands-on clinical trial training.
We are grateful to both Jelena and Hengkang for their contributions and support to the team.
Frailty and Delirium Study
A team from multiple disciplines at NHW supported a study looking at frailty and episodes of delirium following surgery. This study was conducted alongside many metropolitan organisations over a period of 2 weeks. Many hands made light work and we are grateful to Tahira Larsson, a physiotherapist who assisted with our patient assessments and Stephen Surace, an ICU registrar at the time who lent his time to enter data. Thanks also goes to the Medical Registrars who agreed to be surveyed.
The information collected is hoped to educate the development of a screening tool that can be used to accurately assess risk factors for post-operative delirium.
Visits to NHW
The Clinical Trials team have recently hosted visits from a number of clinical trial sponsor companies who assessed our suitability to conduct particular trials. We were fortunate to welcome the Director of Research from Breast Cancer Trials (BCT), Prof Bruce Mann and his team recently. Bruce is a well renowned clinician and researcher in Breast Cancer and BCT is Australia’s largest Breast Cancer Group. Pleasingly, they were impressed with our facility and plan to collaborate on studies with us.