Lorna Beattie, Lisa Turner and Carmel Oostveen, the Clinical Trial co-coordinators, coordinate all Cardiovascular Clinical Trials within Royal Prince Alfred Hospital (RPAH) assisted by Dhairya Vayada who is a research assistance employed by the Baird Institute who assists with research and data management within the department.
There continues to be challenges following the pandemic, but we are happy to say that the recruitment for clinical trials and biobanks at RPAH are on the rise.
RPAH ran the TRiCS III trial back in 2015-2016 which assessed transfusion strategies in patients having heart surgery. This trial showed that a restrictive blood transfusion strategy is as effective as a liberal strategy. However, it was also noted that restrictive transfusion practices may put younger patients at risk of harm and TRiCS IV will now be assessing blood transfusion strategies in a younger patient population. The research team hope to commence TRiCS IV at RPAH in December.
The team are also working on an application to CHeReL (Centre for Health Record Linkage) for a mass data linkage project looking at long-term outcomes in cardiac surgery for 12,000 patients which will have a significant impact in the cardiovascular space. There are several students, registrars and Cardiothoracic Trainee’s involved in the process of collating and analysing data.
