Essex heart experts get £40,000 funding to help improve lives after cardiac arrests
A £40,000 research grant could be life-changing for cardiac arrest survivors and their families across Essex.
A world renowned centre at Basildon Hospital, that helps patients who need specialist treatment for heart conditions, has been awarded the money to help improve their lives.
The Essex Cardiothoracic Centre (CTC) has been awarded the grant by Resuscitation Council UK, which will allow the specialist team – working alongside Sudden Cardiac Arrest UK – to help create a support network of virtual sessions, digital educational videos and leaflets to help cardiac survivors and their families when they are discharged home.
Every year around 30,000 people in England are treated by emergency services following an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) where the patient’s heart stops and requires emergency treatment. The CTC in Basildon treats around 120 OHCA patients a year, with 60-70 of those being discharged to go home.
Dr Thomas Keeble, Consultant Cardiologist and Senior Research Fellow at the CTC, said: “Although many of those survivors will make a ‘good’ recovery, there is evidence that surviving an OHCA can lead to long-term physical, cognitive and psychological difficulties. Our two-year study will set out to measure the impact of post-discharge support and education on the longer term quality of life for patients.”
And that support has been made all the more difficult since Covid. But, this research project , which is set to begin in September, hopes to change all that, for the better.
Cardiac arrest survivors chosen to be part of the intervention research will have four post-discharge zoom video sessions, run by specialist nurses and therapists. Each session will focus on issues commonly reported by OHCA survivors, including anxiety, depression, cognitive challenges, and fatigue.
Survivors and families will also have access to information leaflets specifically focussed on the management of the issues discussed in each session. Short videos on the same topics will also be available to stream before and after each session, encouraging discussion during the virtual group sessions.
Sudden Cardiac Arrest UK, are also partners on this project. They have been working with CTC for the last five years and are the largest peer to peer support network in the UK for over 1,800 cardiac arrest survivors.
Its founder, Paul Swindell, added that it wasn’t just survivors who will benefit from this research; it is also their families. He said: “A family member of survivors will also be part of these sessions and hopefully benefit from the virtual chats and information.
“They have been described as the ‘forgotten patients’ – as they are also at high risk of developing mental health difficulties due to the traumatic nature of seeing their relative collapsing, performing life-saving CPR, and being admitted to the intensive care department. So this research is very important for them as well.”
The hope is now, that by providing relevant information and teaching coping strategies for common mental health difficulties, it will lead to improvement in quality of life for cardiac arrest survivors and their families. If the research proves successful, then it is something that could be rolled out to cardiac arrest centres across the world.