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Benchmarking for healthy stores in remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities
How food is promoted, priced and made available in food retail has considerable impact on consumer behaviour and subsequently population health. In partnership with government and Aboriginal health services, the remote retail sector and policy-makers, we will codesign and test the feasibility and effectiveness of an innovative benchmarking approach to support the uptake of health-enabling best-evidence practice and policy by stores in remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, and identify the pathway to set this benchmarking into policy. We will test feasibility of the benchmarking model through partner organisations who work with community stores in the Northern Territory (NT) and extend our research to include stakeholders from Western Australia (WA), Queensland (QLD) and South Australia (SA) to assess its scalability.
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Co-design of an intervention aimed to Activate pharmacists to review medication-related problems: The ACTMed co-design and pilot study
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The Usefulness of Augmented Reality Assistance for Percutaneous Nephrolithotomy Access: A Scoping Study
We aim to develop and implement a method of displaying live internal anatomical data on head-mounted display using augmented reality technology and use this data to successfully achieve renal access during Percutaneous Nephrolithotomy. Outcomes of interest are: 1. Ability to gain entry to the patient's renal calyx. 2. Number of puncture attempts 3. Ease of access 4. Time taken to achieve entry.
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Assessing the impact of a self-guided digital intervention for fear of cancer recurrence (iConquerFear) in ovarian cancer survivors
The aim of this study is to investigate the feasibility, acceptability, safety, and preliminary efficacy of an online self-management program (iConquerFear) designed by our team to address fear of cancer recurrence (FCR) in individuals with ovarian cancer. Who is it for? You may be eligible for this study if you are aged 18 years or older, have been diagnosed with early (stages I-II) or locally-advanced (stage III) ovarian cancer, and have completed hospital-based surgery, radiotherapy, or chemotherapy. Study details Participants will be randomised (i.e. allocated by chance) to receive the iConquerFear program or to a waitlist control group. iConquerFear is a 5-module web-based program that gives information and guides people to develop skills to cope with FCR. iConquerFear uses written information, interaction and audio-visual aides, including videos of cancer survivors reflecting on their experience of FCR and how iConquerFear has been a useful resource. Each module will take approximately 1-2 hours to complete, and can be completed at your own pace during the 8-week study period. Those allocated to the waitlist control group will instead receive the Ovarian Cancer Australia fact-sheet on FCR, and will receive full access to the iConquerFear program upon completion of the 8-week study questionnaire. All participants will be asked to complete a number of questionnaires before commencing the study, after each module, at 8 weeks post-commencement, and at 20 weeks post-commencement, to assess the feasibility, acceptability, safety, and efficacy of the program. Participants might also undergo an interview (optional) at the completion of the study to assess participants’ experiences and views around the iConquerFear eHealth intervention. It is hoped that this study may demonstrate that the iConquerFear program is feasible, acceptable, safe, and efficacious for managing FCR in individuals with ovarian cancer. This may provide support for a larger randomised controlled trial to demonstrate the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of the program.
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Acupuncture for treating a symptom cluster (pain, fatigue, sleep and neuropathy) for women with breast cancer: a feasibility study
The purpose of this study is to look at the feasibility of acupuncture for treating 'symptom cluster' (such as pain, sleep disturbance, and fatigue) in patients who have had breast cancer treatment. Who is it for? You may be eligible for this study if you are a female aged 18 years or above, and have completed your treatment for breast cancer. Study details All participants will be treated with 8 sessions of acupncture over 6 weeks at the Chris O'Brien Lifehouse. Participants will be asked to attend all treatment sessions and complete a set of questionnaires at the start, the completion and 2 weeks after the completion of the trial. It is hoped that this research will reveal if acupuncture is appropriate for improving the symptoms experienced after breast cancer treatment, thus improving the quality of life of patients.
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An Occupational Therapy Pathway for Mild Traumatic Brain Injury Emergency Department presentations across the lifespan
Mild Traumatic Brain Injury (mTBI) is a significant burden to Queensland emergency departments (EDs) in adults and children. Between 2019-2020, there were over 1800 presentations of isolated mTBI to Gold Coast Hospital Health Service (GCHHS) EDs, presenting outside of usual business hours with 26% re-presented within the first 6 weeks of their initial presentation, many of which were related to the initial injury. Management pathways to support this population and reduce the high rate of re-presentations must therefore be prioritized. With this in mind, the Occupational Therapy (OT) Outpatient Service are implementing an innovative practice model involving specialist OT follow up for these patients to facilitate recovery and linking into appropriate specialty referrals where indicated to prevent ED representations. The primary aim of this research is to evaluate the impact of this Occupational Therapy (OT) intervention pathway for patients presenting to ED with a mTBI outside of business hours compared to pre-implementation care. The study secondly aims to evaluate the process of implementing the pathway in relation to adherence, patient satisfaction, and staff experience. It is anticipated that the implementation of the OT pathway will lead to decreased ED readmission, enhanced clinical outcomes (including reduced functional burden and disability and days missed of work/school) and decreased ED length of stay for monitoring of symptoms.
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ACT2: Phase 2 trial of Amnion Cell Therapy for Ischaemic Stroke
Human amnion epithelial cells (hAECs) therapy attenuated infarct growth even when administered 3 days after the onset of stroke. The mechanisms of action involved modulation of the immune response to minimise further injury in the peri-infarct region. Our recent Phase 1 trial has now shown that amniotic stem cells can be given safely at up to 8 million cells/kg i.v.. We thus now propose a Phase 2 dose escalation trial providing a platform for a Phase 3 trial at a later stage. The design is based on the 1:1:1 randomisation (placebo versus 230 million cells or 460 million cells). Based on our published experimental findings and Phase I dose-escalation human safety trial, we hypothesise that hAECs therapy will reduce stroke disability.
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Skin repair after excisions using a novel dressing; a clinical pilot study
The pilot study was to determine the safety and efficacy of a device which aimed to modify the repair of the extracellular matrix in skin. The hypothesis was that the structured magnetic field of the active device would enable a more efficient repair through enabling the alignment of molecules flowing into the wound thus decreasing the healing time and improving the strength of the repair. Although the intervention was intending to nanoengineer the repair, the outcomes were measured at a macroscopic level by taking photos of the wounds, removing sutures early to test wound strength and including the subject's experience of wearing the device. The control device was a weak active control, which permitted the discernment of a difference between each end to the wound corresponding to the active vs control devices yet enabled the clinical assessment of a weak dosage effect on the repair where the control end was found to have a significant clinical effect on wound strength.
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The effect of repurposing low-dose colchicine in older populations on platelet activation and inflammation (CO-OPERATE): A pilot trial.
While the ability to effectively prevent cardiovascular disease (CVD) in the elderly is imperative, there are few primary prevention therapies. The gout medicine colchicine inhibits the critical pathways of inflammation and platelet activation involved in atherothrombosis, but does not increase bleeding. Colchicine has a broad anti-inflammatory effect. Benefits of long-term low-dose colchicine have been confirmed in people with established coronary artery disease, with a substantial 31% (95%CI 22-40%) reduction in cardiovascular events. We have demonstrated that older people have a distinctive platelet phenotype of increased basal activation, hyperreactivity to adenosine diphosphate and thrombin resistance, correlating with elevated inflammation. Thrombin generation associated with systemic inflammation was identified as a possible novel target to prevent CVD in the elderly. A small pilot trial will be used to assess the effectiveness and safety of colchicine compared to usual care in inhibiting platelet activation and inflammation in elderly patients without cardiovascular disease.
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Prehabilitation and Supportive Care in Oncology Treatment of Breast Cancer (PROActive-B): a feasibility study of women with Breast cancer receiving neoadjuvant chemotherapy
The primary objective of this study is to assess the feasibility, acceptability, and effectiveness of a multimodal early supportive care program delivered during neoadjuvant chemotherapy treatment for women with breast cancer. Who is it for? You may be eligible for this study if you are aged 18 years or older, have been diagnosed with breast cancer, and are planned to receive neoadjuvant (i.e. prior to surgery) chemotherapy. Study details All participants will receive the supportive care program for the duration of their chemotherapy treatment. The program will involve an holistic nursing assessment, tailored exercise (3x per week), three education modules and complementary therapies (acupuncture, massage etc) prescribed and provided when symptom burden is moderate to severe. Participants will complete a number of questionnaires, tests of physical function, and blood tests at the time of enrolment, mid-program, upon completion of the program, after completion of surgery, and at 6 months post-enrolment, in order to determine the safety, acceptability, and effectiveness of the program. It is hoped that this study may show that the multimodal early supportive care program is safe, acceptable to patients and their treating clinicians, and effective in modifying side effects of treatment, chemotherapy adherence, anthropometric measures, and selected cardiac, and disease recurrence risk factors, self-efficacy and satisfaction with surgery.