Queen Elizabeth Hospital Research Tours - Saving Lives and Money: In the Adelaide City region of South Australia
This is the story behind the picture on the cover of the phonebook that you've used for the last year. The photo was taken in the sensory garden next to the new section of the QEH, in itself a sign of things to come. The garden is a research project in its own right but today we're on tour in the Basil Hetzel Institute, where we'll meet some of the best medical researchers the world has to offer.
Good equipment helps, of course. Thanks to a Variety Club donation, we recorded an image magnified 1000 times and captured with a $60,000 camera. The research being conducted in this part of the Institute should lead to better treatment for serious digestive problems.
Next on our Postcards peek, we detour via the Renal Unit to meet nineteen year old Candice who's just received a transplant kidney from her grandfather,Jerry, who describes the transplant.
"It's most enlightening, quite an experience, and I was delighted to be fit enough to be able to donate to my lovely granddaughter".
Their Renal surgeon, Dr. Toby Coates, was lured back home to Adelaide from a top American faculty because the QEH has the biggest transplant unit in Australia. In addition, Toby's working on cutting back the incredible amount of tablets Candice now takes daily. The medication is vital to her body's ongoing acceptance of the new organ but there are serious side effects and Candice's daily intake costs $24,000 per year.
This is where Dr. Toby's lab research comes in, working on his favourite subject - dendritic cells!" Basically, we're interested in trying to isolate the cells that start rejection and what's particularly interesting about them is that, under certain conditions, instead of provoking a rejection response they actually promote the acceptance of graft and tolerance".
Understanding and encouraging that will lead to much better post transplant lives and massive financial savings too.
On another floor of the Basil Hetzel Institute Building, they're literally sleeping on the job and Dr. Nicole Lamond encourages it! She already knows tired long haul shiftworkers don't perform well because of sleep deprivation and so she is researching the recovery side. She is hoping it is going to apply widely.
"Traindrivers, pilots, anyone who works irregular hours and doesn't obtain enough sleep - we're trying to find out how much they actually do need between shifts and how much time they need off to be fully restored".
Dr. Lamond is using a group of volunteers who sleep over at the Institute to measure how much sleep restores their critical capacities. She explains how the volunteers are monitored.
"Basically we've got Charmine wired up and when we start recording we can see her signals... we can see her brainwaves up the top and bottom, her eye movements and her chin movements and basically as she drifts into sleep the signals will change".
The published results may well change shiftwork rosters nationally.
In the Heart Research Unit we discover more life-changing work. Cardiologist, Dr. John Beltrane, is the first in the world to identify what he calls "Slow Flow" - the resulting severe chest pain feels like angina, but there is no obvious restriction to blood feeding through the heart muscles.John shows us the results of an angiogram which, by injecting dye into the arteries, measures the blood flow.
"Where it usually would fill the artery in one beat, you can see in this one it takes many beats to fill the artery."
That's "slow flow", and John is trialing drugs that will relax the tiny capillaries that are the culprits.
There are about 200 medical researchers throughout the QEH as part of the Basil Hetzel Institute. It was named, by the way, after one of South Australia's most distinguished researchers. When you come on tour, well, a lab is a lab sure, but the work that these people are doing and the potential to help people's lives around the world is really exciting. And they'd like to tell you the story.
The QEH Medical Research Foundation raises funds and conducts regular tours. They're turning on a special Postcards tour shortly and so get in touch soon.
The Queen Elizabeth Hospital
Medical Research Foundation
50 Woodville Road
Woodville
South Australia 5011Tour Bookings Ph (08) 8244 1100
