Uni team improve quality of life for cancer patients
Thu, 03 Jan 2013 11:34:00 GMT
Wound UK Award for team who sought to reduce infection following surgery
Project Leader Dr Karen Ousey is pictured centre
RESEARCH at the University of Huddersfield which aims to improve the quality of life for cancer patients by reducing the risk of infection after surgery has won an award – even before it embarks on its final phase.
At the annual Wounds UK Conference, the project led by the University’s Dr Karen Ousey was the winner in the hard-to-heal wounds category. In tandem with the Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust, Dr Ousey and her colleagues are seeking ways to prevent and treat surgical site infection.
Typically, the patients have cancer and have undergone surgery to remove a metastasis of the spine – a form of tumour that might have affected their quality of life, by restricting mobility for instance.
Surgical removal of the metastasis is intended to be palliative and does not provide a cure for their illness. But in some cases the wound caused by the surgery becomes infected.
“These are hard-to-heal wounds because of the co-morbidities that the patient has,” explained Dr Ousey. “Only a fairly low number of people suffer from infection, but if you have got cancer with spinal metastases you don’t want any risk of this happening.
“We are looking at their quality of life, so that patients can go home after surgery and live out their life with no wound effects.”
First stage of research
The 12-month project received an award of £19,000 from the Urgo Foundation and the first stage of research was to conduct a systematic review of all the available material on surgical site infection. This is the exhaustive process that was honoured by Wounds UK.
Now the team will move on to the next phase and try to discover markers that could indicate whether or not a patient is at risk of infection. Dr Ousey’s University of Huddersfield colleagues on the project are senior lecturers Steve Lui and Dr John Stephenson. They are working alongside Dr Ross Atkinson and Consultant Spinal Surgeon Mr Brad Williamson at Salford Royal.
The Wounds UK Conference was a double success for Karen Ousey. In addition to winning the hard-to-heal wounds award, she was also Highly Commended for a project in the well-being category. This was for research into negative pressure wound therapy, which involves the attachment of a device via a tube to a patient.
It was known that the technique was effective in treating large wounds, said Dr Ousey, but there had been concerns that having to carry the device around might be a major problem.
However, after research conducted in tandem with South of Tyne and Wear Primary Care Trust and Mid Yorkshire NHS Trust, Dr Ousey’s project concluded that the negative pressure therapy not only worked clinically but did not dilute the patient’s quality of life.
The University of Huddersfield recently won the award of the Entrepreneurial University of the Year for 2012.
