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This study aims to investigate the impact of a tailored supervised exercise program on the metabolic, psychosocial and cardiovascular risk factors of adolescent and young adult survivors of childhood cancer. Who is it for? You or your child may be eligible to join this study if you/they are aged between 15-23 years and have had either brain tumours or cranial irradiation. Study details: Participants in this study will be randomly (by chance) allocated to one of two groups. The first group will take part in a 6 month supervised exercise program which is administered by an exercise physiologist (personal trainor)for 3 x 1 hour sessions per week. Participants in the other group will receive no intervention initially, but will take part in the exercise program after a period of 6 months. Proir to and on completion of the program participants will undergo clinical tests and complete some questionnaires in order to evaluate the impact of exercise on metabolic, cardiovascular and psychosocial wellbeing.

Respiratory failure is the major cause of mortality and morbidity in patients with MND. Non-invasive ventilation provides respiratory support via a mask and machine and has become part of standard care for MND patients who develop sleep symptoms or respiratory failure. The current recommendations for NIV are mainly based on one study which reported that NIV prolonged survival and increased quality of life in a sub-group of patients with MND. However this study had only 22 patients in the NIV treatment group and NIV settings were changed based on patient tolerance and daytime blood gas changes, rather than in response to the type of abnormal breathing. In clinical practice, NIV is initially delivered during sleep, but is sometimes extended to the daytime as the disease progresses. The usual mode of NIV requires that the patient generates sufficient inspiratory effort to trigger pressure delivery by the machine. Inspiratory (and expiratory) pressure levels are usually chosen empirically without a sleep study. In a recent preliminary study including more systematic sleep studies, we found that NIV as currently provided to MND patients is suboptimal and in some instances may be dangerous. MND patients showed a variety of breathing abnormalities including obstructive apnea (a clinically silent variant not associated with snoring), central sleep apnea and varying levels of hypoventilation. Consequently, the traditional “one size fits all” approach to NIV treatment using empirically determined pressure settings is clearly sub-optimal. This project aims, for the first time, to characterize the patterns of abnormal breathing in MND patients and to investigate changes in breathing abnormalities as the disease progresses. We will also test the usefulness of a new “smart” ventilator in MND patients. This will help clarify the nature of gradually progressive deteriorations in breathing and how best to tailor treatments to improve breathing, sleep, quality of life and survival in patients with MND.

This study aims to explore the effect of pain-related attentional bias modification on the interpretation and experience of acute pain, and on psychological variables. Participants will complete the the questionnaires, then a computer based interpretation bias task, followed by the attentional bias modification. They will then then complete the interpretation bias task again, and finally the experimental pain tasks.

Prior to transplantation, patients with end stage liver failure experience marked declines in cardiorespiratory fitness and muscular strength compared to age matched healthy controls. This affects the patient’s ability to perform activities of daily living, which severely impacts upon health related quality of life. Emerging evidence suggests that a higher cardiorespiratory fitness prior to transplant surgery can result in higher post-operative survival rate. It has also been demonstrated that there is a decreased time in critical care following transplantation. Exercise training has demonstrated to be a safe and effective therapy for improving these physiological parameters, however evidence as to whether it is safe, feasible and efficacious in end stage liver disease patients requiring a liver transplantation is minimal and requires further investigation. Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate the safety, adherence and efficacy of a 12-week exercise training program and exercise maintenance in patients awaiting a liver transplantation.

There is no good evidence to guide the choice of breath size (tidal volume) delivered by the breathing machine during anaesthesia. In a recent multi-centre study, we found that anaesthetists deliver a variable tidal volumes with some patients receiving low-tidal volumes (6-7 ml/kg) and others receiving high-tidal volumes (9-10 ml/Kg) according to clinician preference. We also found that they typically positive end expiratory pressure (PEEP) (pressure to keep lung when breathing out has been completed) at an average modest value of 5.0 cmH2O. Thus, in Victoria and the Austin hospital in patients under general anaesthesia administered tidal volume can be variably high or low and PEEP is often applied at modest levels. Because of such variability and the possibility that one approach or another may be better at avoiding lung complications after anaesthesia, we wish to perform prospective randomised trial to evaluate the impact and outcome of two different tidal volume strategies during anaesthesia. Specifically, we wish to conduct a pilot single-centre prospective randomised trial comparing a low tidal volume (6 ml/kg) to a higher tidal volume (10 ml/kg) tidal volume strategy in combination with PEEP at 5 cm H2O for patients undergoing major surgery. The anticipated sample size is 900 participants over a 18 month period. Patients will be randomly allocated to either low or control tidal volume ventilation for the period of their surgical procedure to test the hypothesis that one of these two approaches in superior at decreasing post-surgical lung complications.

This study will evaluate the effects of a drug, AUY922 which inhibits heat shock protein 90 and may disrupt cancer cell growth in men with high-risk, localised protate cancer. You may be eligible to join this study if you are male, aged 18 years or over and have been diagnosed with prostate cancer and scheduled for a prostectomy surgery. The majority of men diagnosed with prostate cancer have disease confined to their prostate and surgery and/or radiotherapy offers a potential cure. However many men can have the cancer return within 5 - 7 years. Treatments for these men with recurrent prostate cancer are limited. The purpose of this study is to answer the question if treatment with a new drug called AUY922 (a 60 minute intravenous infusion at 70 mg/m2 on days 1, 8, 15 and 22 over a 28 day cycle) can stop the growth of prostate cancer cells. Prostate cancer cell growth can be measured by a protein called Ki67. Prostate tissue from biopsies from men with prostate cancer will be collected before treatment with AUY922. All men approached will be having a prostatectomy. After patients have received treatment, their prostate tissue will be collected at surgery evaluated for expression of Ki67. It is hypothesised that Ki67 expression will be 50% lower compared with before treatment. If there is sufficient activity in the first 25 men who receive treatment, the study will continue to a full experimental cohort of 41 patients. Fourteen (14) patients will be recruited to be a control group with no treatment prior to prostatectomy.

This project aims to test the feasbility of a trial into a new type of partograph for measuring progress in labour with the goal of increasing rates of spontaneous vaginal birth (SVB), improving maternal and infant health outcomes and reducing maternity costs. The partograph is a paper based tool recommended by the World Health Organisation (WHO), and universally used to measure progress in labour and to assist in the diagnosis and management of prolonged labour. Research suggests that a newly designed partograph could be more appropriate to the high resource setting and may result in increased SVB rates without harmful effects on mother or baby. We hypothesise that such a partograph will result in fewer women requiring augmentation (medical acceleration of labour) and increase the rate of SVBs. This trial will also determine the effect of the new partograph on analgesic use, operative birth (caesarean section and instrumental), maternal and infant outcomes. Appropriate management in labour is critical to achieving optimal SVB rates

Immunisation is regarded as one of the most significant preventive health measures of all time. Since the implementation of immunisation programs worldwide, there has been a substantial reduction in both morbidity and mortality caused by infectious diseases. Most vaccines, however, require a needle puncture and infants receive up to 14 separate injections within the first 18 months of life. Up to four separate injections may be required on the one occasion in high risk infants. Sucrose 25% is now a widely used strategy for the management of needle related pain in Australian neonatal intensive care units, special care nurseries and postnatal units in newborn infants. However, the results from a recent Cochrane systematic review concluded that there is a lack of evidence to recommend sucrose for the management of needle-related pain in older infants. The authors recommended that further research is required to determine the effectiveness of sucrose, and also determine the most effective concentration in older, larger infants beyond the newborn period.

The study aims to evaluate the applicability of Multiparametric Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MP MRI) and Positron Emission Tomography (PET) with [68Ga]Gallium-labelled prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA) ligand (68Ga-HBED-CC) for the detection of cancer foci in localised prostate cancer patients. You may be eligible to join this study if you are a male aged 18 years or above who has been diagnosed with localised prostate cancer, and are awaiting prostatectomy. All participants in this study will undergo Multiparametric (MP) Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), Positron Emission Tomography (PET) with [68Ga]Gallium-labelled Prostate-specific membrane antigen ligand (68Ga-HBED-CC) and whole-mount pathology analysis. For MP MRI the participants will be lying flat on the back on a bed that moves through a scanner. In order to get the best pictures, the participants will be injected with a contrast agent (or “dye”). The whole scan would take about 30 to 40 minutes. A medication called Buscopan or Glucagon is injected into the blood stream to slow bowel movement, since a moving bowel can reduce the quality of the image. For PET, the [68Ga]Gallium-labelled Prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA) ligand will be injected into the blood stream. After 90 minutes, the participants will be placed in the PET scanner and the scan will begin (scanning takes ~30 minutes). A low dose whole-body computed tomography (CT) scan will be performed during the PET scan as this helps to interpret the PET scan. For whole-mount pathology, the participants do not need to do anything. The prostate tissue will be collected after surgery as part of their clinical management. A standard pathology report will be reported to the surgeon as a standard clinical management. Results will be compared and analysed once we have the results from PET scan, multiparametric MRI scan and wholemount pathology review.

A proof-of-concept study to assess the effect of ACT-451840 against early Plasmodium falciparum blood stage infection in healthy subjects