ReDVA Collaborations for the period october 2013 – June 2015
QEHB: In a bid to foster knowledge exchange and future partnerships,ESR 8 (Julien Alshakarchi, QEHB to GU) has been collaborating with vascular access (VA) surgeons in Paris. This collaboration has involved Julien attending the Paris units and cooperating with data sharing. Julien’s collabortion has generated presentations and publications for ReDVA .
UNIVDUN: Graeme Houston (CI), has secured access to the Scottish Renal Registry data for all haemodyalsis patients in Tayside, from 2006 onwards. In collaboration with Tayside Health Informatics (HIC), Dundee aims to use this data to create ‘patient timelines’ from vascular access surgery through to fistula failure or death. It is hoped that by tracking patient data over a number of years, we will increase our understanding of why some fistulas fail whilst others do not.
QEHB/UNIVDUN: Nick Inston (MER 8), Graeme Houston, Deirdre Cassidy (ESR 1), Julien Al Shakarchi (ESR 8) and Zaib Khawaja (ESR 7) are currently involved in a European collaboration with the European Renal Best Practice (ERBP) guidelines group. The aim of this collaboration is to update the ERBP guidelines as they were last updated 7 years ago. Additionally, the ERBP are aware that evidence has changed (as has how we look at evidence) since the last update.
UNIVDUN/QEHB: A further collaborative study has stemmed from the ERBP collaboration. The Nationwide Datamining Group was founded by Graeme Houston and Nick Inston and involves clinical colleagues in Dundee, Birmingham, Glasgow, Cardiff and Belfast. The goal of this on-going work is to retrospectively collate data on AV access procedures/failures/successes in a few units. It is hoped this work will highlight practice and pathway discrepancies and outcomes. It will also provide us with good UK baseline values to base other studies on and use as benchmarks in a bid to develop a universal method of collating, as this does not currently exist in the UK or EU.
On the back of this work, the Nationwide Datamining collaboration submitted a research proposal to NIHR entitled “The Clinical need and proposal for Renal Dialysis Vascular Access as a priority area for NIHR”.
The Nationwide Datamining collaboration has also recently submitted a request to assess EuroDoPPS data.
QEHB/UNIVDUN/GU: As MRI appeared to be an under-utilised modality a detailed diagnostic test assessment was performed. This involved Zaib Khawaja, Julian Alshakarchi, and Deirdre Cassidy training in statistical methodology and collaboration with the Cochrane working group. A subsequent application for a formal Cochrane review was submitted by the group. The review proposal was accepted in April 2015.
VFT: VFT have held 2 meetings with potential commercial partners. The ReDVA secondees; Efstratios Kokkalis (ESR 2), Stephen Broderick (ER 5) and Leonard Browne (ESR 6), assisted VFT with initial testing activities on a Patented proof of concept Self-Expanding Nitinol Peripheral Stents incorporating a Spiral Flow Inducing Ridge. This work provided VFT with essential input and test reports for these meetings and assisted VFT in positioning itself as a developer and manufacturer of a novel peripheral stent. In addition to the testing activities the ReDVA secondees were engaged in CAD modelling activities to better understand the geometrical limitations around the stent modification process.
VFT: Stratos Kokkalis, Stephen Broderick, Leonard Browne and Nicolas Aristokleous (ER 3 Recruit) are collaborating with Prof Peter Hoskins from the university of Edinburgh in relation to flow phantoms and ultrasound studies. Peter is an expert in this area.
