Ballarat Base Hospital has ROCK-eted to new heights in medical research as one of the largest contributors to a worldwide clinical trial to help prevent chronic pain after surgery.
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More than 450 patients who have undergone surgery at the hospital since 2019 have been recruited to the Reduction Of Chronic post-surgical pain with Ketamine (ROCKet) trial which investigates whether the use of the painkiller ketamine before, during and after an operation reduces the incidence of chronic post-surgical pain at three months and 12 months after surgery.
There is currently no proven treatment to prevent chronic pain from surgery.
"Pain is subjective and unique to each person. We know that it affects our patients, their recovery, their quality of life and can become a financial burden on patients and the health care system," said Grampians Health anaesthetic research coordinator Natasha Brice.
"Ketamine is a medication we already use quite a lot. It's used worldwide, we are not trialling a new medication, we are trying to see if it has the added benefit of three months or 12 months down the track preventing pain from surgery."
Grampians Health is one of 36 sites around the world participating in the study, having signed up more than 10 per cent of the total number of patients placing it second in the world and first in Australia for patient recruitment.
Patients who fit specific inclusion criteria are asked on the day of their surgery whether they would like to participate in the trial.
The ROCKet study is a randomised, double-blind trial which means patients, surgeons and staff do not know whether the patient is being administered ketamine or a placebo.
"Because pain is so subjective it's really important to keep our data robust," Ms Brice said. "We need almost 5000 patients worldwide to really show us the data we need to know if it's effective or not."
Ballarat this week signed up the 4000th global study participant, and the 453rd local patient
"We don't have a big number of patients, compared to big city hospitals, or huge numbers of operating theatres so I think it says a lot about the community we live in that people really want to give back.
"That seems to be a really common interest of patients who say yes ... wanting to give back to the community and back to future generations."
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She said the success in recruiting also came down to a team of supportive anaesthetists, including ROCKet principal investigator Dr Greg Henderson, and support from different departments across the hospital.
Ms Brice said it was important that regional and rural health services were involved in medical research and clinical trials.
"It's important because there's such a big population out here and we don't normally get represented in big multi-centre global trials. It's so important we are represented in data collection ... because it's more of a result of what happens in real life ... and regional centres are great places to recruit in for trials because there's such a willing participant population.
"It's nice we can give back to worldwide medical knowledge."
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