Translation of evidence into pain management practices in acute care environments. This project addresses the urgent need to reduce the substantial pain experienced by patients following surgery by improving the clinical processes associated with the treatment of pain. Each year in Australia, six million people are admitted to hospital for surgery. A recent review of Australian research has shown that up to 40% of hospitalised surgical patients experience significant pain. Despite the availabili ....Translation of evidence into pain management practices in acute care environments. This project addresses the urgent need to reduce the substantial pain experienced by patients following surgery by improving the clinical processes associated with the treatment of pain. Each year in Australia, six million people are admitted to hospital for surgery. A recent review of Australian research has shown that up to 40% of hospitalised surgical patients experience significant pain. Despite the availability of effective treatment, pain after surgery is often under-treated and is one of the main postoperative adverse outcomes. A consequence of poor pain management is that patients experience unnecessary suffering, higher incidence of postoperative complications significant risk of developing chronic post-surgical pain.Read moreRead less
Presynaptic mechanisms of general anaesthesia in the fly brain. General anaesthesia is a routine procedure for both human and veterinary surgery and for any experimental paradigms requiring immobilization of animals. By abolishing consciousness, these drugs provide practitioners with an ideal way of manipulating subjects under conditions when responsiveness might be undesirable. Understanding how manipulating synaptic release mechanisms might modulate anaesthetic potency will be valuable for eve ....Presynaptic mechanisms of general anaesthesia in the fly brain. General anaesthesia is a routine procedure for both human and veterinary surgery and for any experimental paradigms requiring immobilization of animals. By abolishing consciousness, these drugs provide practitioners with an ideal way of manipulating subjects under conditions when responsiveness might be undesirable. Understanding how manipulating synaptic release mechanisms might modulate anaesthetic potency will be valuable for eventually being able to better control the anaesthetized state in human and animal subjects. By understanding general anaesthesia across multiple levels of brain function, we will at the same time be answering fundamental questions pertaining to mechanisms of perception and awareness. Read moreRead less
Novel polymeric microparticles for slow-release intrathecal delivery of analgesics. Unrelieved chronic pain is a large area of unmet medical need, adversely affecting the lives of millions of people worldwide. This project seeks to develop innovative methods for delivering a novel pain-relieving medication into the spinal fluid in close proximity to the cells that transmit pain messages to the brain. The goal is to develop a new treatment to produce prolonged periods of pain relief in those pat ....Novel polymeric microparticles for slow-release intrathecal delivery of analgesics. Unrelieved chronic pain is a large area of unmet medical need, adversely affecting the lives of millions of people worldwide. This project seeks to develop innovative methods for delivering a novel pain-relieving medication into the spinal fluid in close proximity to the cells that transmit pain messages to the brain. The goal is to develop a new treatment to produce prolonged periods of pain relief in those patients who do not obtain benefit from existing pain medications. The technology that will be developed has the potential to be applied to a broad range of analgesic drug treatments.Read moreRead less