The Tactical Military Austere and Operational Medicine programme is hosted by the Centre for Neuroscience, Surgery and Trauma at the Blizard Institute.
The Centre’s themes are closely linked with clinical academic units within Barts Health NHS Trust, with many of its staff actively involved in clinical research, phase 2 and 3 clinical trials. The research themes are designed to create partnerships between basic scientists and clinicians in order to encourage true translational research.
Research involving Professor Tim Harris has recently shown the prognostic value of lactate and acid-base status in patients presenting to the emergency department. Point-of-care metabolic screens are frequently used in the assessment of critical illness. Lactate levels predict mortality in a wide range of patients presenting to the Emergency Department but the effect of co-existing acidosis is unknown. The evaluation investigated the effect that acidosis has on in-hospital mortality for patients with hyperlactataemia. In an undifferentiated cohort of Emergency Department patients presenting to the resuscitation area, lactaemia associated with acidosis is a more accurate predictor of in-hospital mortality than hyperlactataemia.
View the research paper
Libby Thomas was recently part of a team that published guidance for using simulation to prepare and improve responses to infectious disease outbreaks like COVID-19. The guidance provides tools which can be used to analyse the current needs of the situation, explain how simulation can help to improve responses to the crisis, what the key issues are with integrating simulation into organisations, and what to focus on when conducting simulations. They provide an overview of helpful resources and a collection of scenarios and support for centre-based and in situ simulations. Simulation has great potential to help mitigate the negative effects of the COVID-19 crisis and potentially for future crisis situations. The examples and tips provided in the paper can help simulation to harvest this potential in the interest of patients, relatives, the public, and healthcare professionals.
A systematic review and meta-analysis of return to work times for adult patients with mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) was conducted by researchers including Ben Bloom and Tim Harris. They found that more than half of patients with mTBI have returned to work by one month after injury, and more than 80 per cent by six months.
Read the review