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Current treatment of heart attacks focuses on the large arteries of the heart where the blockages can be seen with injection of X­ray dye (contrast). However, the small arteries of the heart are increasingly recognised to play a key role in affecting the outcome of patients after heart attacks. The function of the small arteries of the heart may be worsened by heart attacks and by balloons and stenting procedures to unblock the main arteries. It can also be worsened by life style factors like smoking and high cholesterol. The index of microcirculatory resistance (IMR) is a new measure and has been shown to be a highly precise and reliable method of assessing the function of the small arteries of the heart. However, it is unclear if this new measure applies to patients after non-ST elevation acute coronary syndromes (NSTE-ACS), which is the most common form of heart attacks presenting to hospitals. This study aims to use IMR to examine ways to improve function of the small arteries of the heart in patients after NSTE-­ACS. We plan to primarily examine the effects of 2 different blood thinners (anti-platelet agents), clopidogrel and ticagrelor, on the IMR after NSTE-ACS. Both drugs are approved treatments for NSTE­-ACS. All participants will receive standard medical care as determined by their treating doctors.

Anxiety disorders are among the most common mental health problems experienced by children and adolescents. Children with hearing loss often experience greater anxiety symptoms than children without hearing loss. Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) has a strong evidence base for being efficacious and useful in treating anxiety in children. However, most children with anxiety do not engage in child-focused CBT or mental health treatment of any kind due to reasons such as financial cost and parental perceptions of their child being stigmatized by others. This has led to an examination of parent-focused interventions, such as Fear-Less Triple P, in reducing children’s anxiety as a way of addressing these barriers. There has, however, been no research into specifically examining parent-focused interventions in reducing anxiety in anxious children with hearing loss. Given this gap in the literature, the current research project aims to examine the efficacy of a parenting intervention (the Fear-Less Triple P workshop) with parents of anxious children and have hearing loss. A naturalistic waitlist group will be built into the study design to allow comparison of this group with the active Fear-Less workshop.

1. What is the research project about? Babies can be born with different degrees of hearing loss. Hearing aids are generally provided to them to help them hear well. Whilst we know that hearing aids help babies with moderate or greater degrees of hearing loss, we do not know whether hearing aids are helpful for babies with mild hearing loss, even though they are often offered to these babies. This is a pilot study that will help us plan for a bigger study in the future to increase knowledge about whether hearing aids help babies with mild hearing loss.Hearing aids can help babies with moderate or greater degrees of hearing loss to hear. However,, but we do not know whether they help babies with mild hearing loss even though they are commonly offered hearing aids. . This study is a first step to collect information that we hope will lead to a larger study to helps us answer this important question. 2. Who is running the project? The study is run by a team based at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute (MCRI) in Melbourne and the National Acoustic Laboratories (NAL) in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland. MCRI is the research institute affiliated with the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne and is the largest child health research institute in Australia. NAL is the research arm of Australian Hearing, which is responsible for looking after the hearing health of all children with hearing loss in Australia. The study is funded by a philanthropic grant from the Garnett Passe and Rodney Williams Memorial Foundation.

Probiotics are defined as live microorganisms which when administered in adequate amount confer a health benefit on the host. The probiotic efficacy relies on their ability to survive in the digestive system and proliferate in the gut. The aim of this study is to investigate the survival of LcS in the intestine of healthy Australian adults after intake of fermented milk (Yakult). A single-arm, open-label study involving 25 otherwise healthy adults will examine the recovery of live culturable bacteria from faecal samples following 7 and 14 days of Yakult ingestion.

The study will have a pretest-posttest design and will be conducted on community-dwelling people with SCI. Participants will train a partially paralysed muscle group for six weeks. The purpose of this study is to determine changes in muscle architecture of partially paralysed muscles in response to strength training. An understanding of the underlying causes of strength increases in people with spinal cord injury will help inform the development and provision of rehabilitation programs. Muscle architecture will be measured before and after training using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). The participants will receive a strength-training program for the target muscle group three times a week for 6 weeks which will consist of both isometric and concentric contractions. We hypothesise that strength training of partially paralysed muscles will increase muscle physiological cross-sectional area

Patient reported outcomes (PRO) are increasingly used to measure the effectiveness of interventions for management of chronic conditions. Many of these instruments require respondents to describe the change in their health status from baseline to a follow-up assessment. This is often problematic for patients with chronic disease and poor recall of previous health status limits the usefulness and validity of these PRO measures. The aim of the study proposed here is to evaluate the utility of tablet computers as a technological tool to aid patients’ recall of previous responses when completing PRO measures. Our hypothesis is that the magnitude of the difference (responsiveness) will be greatest in those who saw the audio-visual recording. The feasibility assessment will be reported using descriptive statistics based on the NIHR (UK) feasibility and pilot studies criteria..

The aim of this research project is to test an online program, Uprise, in Australian tertiary students. The program is designed to improve the wellbeing of university students through a series of interactive modules informed by cognitive behavioural therapy and mindfulness. Participation involves completing four modules of the program over a 4-week period. The study also involves at least three 2-4 hour assessments, one before starting the program, one after completion of the program, and another 3 months later. All assessment sessions will be held at the Swinburne Hawthorn campus, or via telephone or video conference. Half of the participants will be randomly selected to wait a month after the first assessment and complete an additional 1-2 hour assessment before starting the program.

This study will explore the feasibility of expiratory muscle strength training (EMST), as a novel, non-invasive treatment approach to reduce drooling in people who have Parkinson's disease (PD). The intervention involves breathing into a threshold loading device. The intervention will take place over a 6 week period and will involve both supervised and unsupervised practice. We hypothesise that EMST will be feasible and well tolerated in this population and will reduce drooling in people with PD by strengthening the muscles associated with lip closure and swallowing.

This study aims to treat young children between the ages of 3-5 years who are suffering from a specific phobia. Research to date suggests that whilst older children and adults can be successfully treated with a one session psychological treatment for phobias, it is currently unknown whether pre-school aged children will benefit and have long lasting effects from this intervention. The aim of this study is to engage children in a one session exposure treatment using a play based approach, and compare long term outcomes, relative to two other conditions -- a 6 month waitlist condition (monitoring only), as well as an education support intervention. This study is a randomized controlled trial, which means children are randomly assigned to one of three different conditions. The three conditions are; (1) a one-session cognitive-behavioural intervention with play therapy (P-OST); (2) an educational support intervention (EST); and (3) a 6 month waitlist control condition. If children in the EST or waitlist conditions continue to experience their phobia, they will be offered the one session cognitive-behavioural intervention at 12 months follow-up.

This study aims to investigate whether a 12-week combined psycho-education, exercise and oral health intervention can improve general wellbeing, cognition, mental and metabolic health in individuals residing in residential aged care. The active intervention will comprise a group-based exercise and psycho-education program with immediate dental treatment. Results will be compared to an active workbook control condition, who will be offered the oral health intervention following the 12-week intervention period. We hypothesise that the combined psycho-education, exercise and oral health intervention can improve general wellbeing, cognition, mental health and metabolic health, and we may see a greater positive effect of the combined exercise and psychoeducation program in the facilitated group as compared to the active workbook control group. Furthermore, we may find that the dental treatment is more effective following the completion of the exercise and psychoeducation program rather than concurrently with the exercise and psychoeducation program.