Preventing Brain and Kidney Injury in Critically Ill Patients
Join Dr Yugeesh Lankadeva and Professor Clive May to hear about new strategies to prevent brain and kidney injury in intensive care units
In the Preclinical Critical Care Unit at the Florey researchers study the disease processes of critical illness with the aim of developing improved treatments for critically ill patients treated in intensive care units.
This lecture will focus on two main research areas, the causes of brain and kidney injury arising from heart surgery with cardiopulmonary bypass (using a heart lung machine) and caused by severe infection (sepsis).
Worldwide, sepsis is diagnosed in ~49 million people/year, resulting in 11 million sepsis related deaths, and heart surgery with cardiopulmonary bypass is performed on ~2 million people.
Major unresolved complications of sepsis and cardiopulmonary bypass are injury to the brain and the kidneys. Development of acute brain and kidney injury can profoundly increase the length of hospital stay, risk of in-hospital death and substantially diminish a patient’s subsequent quality of life.
Dr Lankadeva and Prof Clive May's findings have already had a significant impact towards developing new diagnostics and treatments, which are currently being tested in patients undergoing heart surgery and those diagnosed with sepsis at Austin Health, Monash Health and the Royal Melbourne Hospital.