Author: Marian Chandler

Enrolment

BellPIC currently has 53 patients enrolled.

Recruitment stats

• 53 enrolled
• 39 excluded
• 43 refused
• 14 missed
• 99 ineligible

Sites currently recruiting

• Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne – 24 enrolled
• Monash Medical Centre – 3 enrolled – 1 withdrew
• Princess Margaret Hospital, Perth – 10 enrolled
• Women’s and Children’s Hospital Adelaide – 3 enrolled
• Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital – 7 enrolled
• Children’s Hospital Westmead – 5 enrolled
• Starship New Zealand- 1 enrolled
• John Hunter Hospital- 1 enrolled- Lost to follow up
• Gold Coast University Hospital- 1 enrolled
• The Townsville Hospital

New Sites

Logan Hospital- will commence shortly.

 

On 30 August 2017 Paediatric Trials Network Australia will bring together experts in rare childhood diseases and in rare treatments for diseases from all over Australia for the PTNA Trials Day. Researchers, study co-ordinators, research nurses and other health and research professionals who are interested in rare diseases are encouraged to register.

For further information or to register for this event visit the PTNA website.

Congratulations to Ben Lawton and Simon Craig for the successful application for funding from the Emergency Medicine Foundation (EMF).  A grant for $69,444 has been awarded for the asthma study “How are we treating severe childhood asthma in Australasia?”.

 

 

Congratulations to Natalie Philips and the APHIRST-Gap team for the successful application for funding from the Emergency Medicine Foundation (EMF).  A grant for $62,749 has been awarded for Assessing Children’s Head Injury: Variation in CT scan use (APHIRST-Gap).

 

 

 

Aim

• To describe the prevalence of clinically significant abdominal pathology, patterns of imaging and pathology tests, management and outcomes of children presenting to ED with abdominal pain.
• To assess the diagnostic accuracy based on clinical gestalt of ED clinicians according to clinician seniority in diagnosing paediatric acute appendicitis.

Methodology

Four PREDICT EDs (listed below) prospectively enrolled children aged 0-16 presenting with abdominal pain over a one-month period at each site. Descriptive data was collected for each patient, and clinicians completed a questionnaire stating their seniority and estimated likelihood of their patient having acute appendicitis which was compared with the patient’s final diagnosis.

Enrolment

PAPA has completed enrolment and has 555 patients enrolled as of 27/7/17.

Recruitment stats

• 555 enrolled
•     0 excluded
•   12 refused (verbal consent for CRF phone follow up – refused)
• 166 missed (verbal consent for CRF phone follow up – missed)
   

SITES CURRENTLY RECRUITED:

• Casey Hospital – 72 enrolled
• Dandenong Hospital – 35 enrolled
• Monash Medical Centre, Clayton – 138 enrolled
• Princess Margaret Hospital, Perth – 310 enrolled

No significant issues with processes or follow up system.
Missed 174 (31.4%) for clinician gestalt due to no CRF filled for clinician gestalt.
Reviewed ‘missed’ cases of appendicitis to see if there were documentation of planned review.

NEWS: Data collection and cleaning is complete for the project with two abstracts (‘Diagnostic accuracy of clinical gestalt in paediatric appendicitis in Australian emergency departments’ and ‘Paediatric abdominal pain: prevalence, patterns and clinical outcomes in Australian emergency departments’) submitted for ACEM ASM in Sydney for poster/oral presentation in Nov 2017

 

Our congratulations to Heather Deane and the study team on the acceptance of the paper, “The PREDICT Prioritisation Study: Establishing the Research Priorities of Paediatric Emergency Medicine Physicians in Australia & New Zealand”. This will be published in the Emergency Medicine Journal soon.  Thanks to all PREDICT members who participated too!

Current PREDICT members will receive an email on 1/8/17 with a link to our database, where they will be asked to review and update their existing information. Details previously completed will appear in the form so you are only required to check the information and update if necessary. We are allowing 6 weeks to complete the form with the final date for completion being 12/09/17. The process takes approximately 2 minutes and we will send you a weekly reminder.

Once the form is submitted, your membership is automatically renewed and valid until September 2019.

If the form is not completed by 12/09/2017, we will assume that you no longer wish to remain a member and will remove you from our contact list.

We ask that you respond promptly to ensure your membership data remains up-to-date.

Welcome back from maternity leave to Amanda Williams, project manager of BellPIC. Amanda is working 3 days a week – Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and can be found right back in her old office – it’s just like she never left!

We would also like to take this opportunity to thank Danni Van Den Dungen and Ashlea Logan for managing  this role over the past months and doing a fantastic job.

 

Take this opportunity to attend the Acute Care and Research Translation Workshop being run by the Emergency Medicine Foundation (EMF) in collaboration with PREDICT.  This workshop is followed by the EMF Research Symposium the next day.

See the program below for detailed information.

Workshop and Symposium program

Register now here!