Recent Projects

Summer Studentships 2023-2024

Historical projects

In 1997, a major contribution was made towards the establishment of a patient simulator in Wellington which has helped many to train for responses to adverse events. Since then, researchers have been helped with grants for their research, anaesthetic technicians helped with course fees and anaesthesia trainees’ presentations at conferences have been supported.

Safety

In the early 1990s, anaesthetists at Wellington Hospital noticed several patients undergoing brain surgery required greater amounts of paralyzing drugs to ensure that they did not spontaneously move their head or limbs. This is important as surgeons require anaesthetised patients not to move while being operated on. The anesthetists suspected that this was due to the interaction of the paralysing drug with another drug, a steroid, used to decrease pressure on the brain. They reviewed patient notes and found that patients given the steroid were administered more paralysing agent than those who were not and published this as a case report (Betamethasone-induced resistance to vecuronium: a potential problem in neurosurgery?). which proposed that this was due to the molecular structures of these two drugs being similar.

This interaction was subsequently demonstrated in laboratory-based research funded by the Trust (Interaction between betamethasone and vecuronium) which proposed that this was due to the molecular structures of these two drugs being similar. A subsequent research project, again funded by the Trust, allowed this interaction to be investigated further by comparing the effect with another paralysing agent with a very different structure. (Betamethasone-induced resistance to neuromuscular blockade: a comparison of atracurium and vecuronium in vitro) and found that both paralysing agents were equally affected. The significance of this research is that this identified an interaction of drugs that could adversely affect the safety of patients undergoing brain surgery that had not been reported.  This research demonstrated that this interaction is due to two different classes of drugs and has been cited extensively by international researchers.Parr, S. M., D. C. Galletly, and B. J. Robinson. "Betamethasone-induced resistance to vecuronium: a potential problem in neurosurgery?." Anaesthesia and Intensive Care 19, no. 1 (1991): 103-105