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The Principal Investigators are:
Dr. Blake Gilks, Pathology and Laboratory Medicine
Biomarker Assessment in Ovarian Cancer
Dr. David Harrison, Emergency Medicine
Intravenous Metoclopramide for the Treatment of Post Concussive Headache: A Randomized Placebo Controlled Trial
Dr. Juan Ronco, Critical Care Medicine
Survival Using Glucose Algorithm Regulation (SUGAR) Trial
Dr. Garth Warnock, Surgery
Cryopreservation of Human Islets for Clinical Transplant
Dr. Blake Gilks:
Ovarian cancer has typically spread beyond the ovaries at the time of diagnosis, and current chemotherapy is variably effective against advanced stage disease. We propose to study a series of 106 patients with advanced stage ovarian carcinoma treated with platinum/taxane chemotherapy, with at least five years of follow-up, in an attempt to identify molecular markers predictive of patient response to chemotherapy and outcome.
Dr. David Harrison:
The objective of this study is to prospectively evaluate the effect of metoclopramide in Emergency Department (ED) patients with minor head injury. The primary hypothesis is that the administration of intravenous metoclopramide will be more effective than placebo in significantly relieving pain from acute post-concussive headache (PCH) in ED patients with minor head injury. The secondary hypothesis is that the administration of intravenous metoclopramide will reduce the incidence of post-concussive syndrome (PCS) compared to placebo in ED patients with minor head injury. The primary research question is: "Does the administration of intravenous metaclopramide at a dose of 10 or 20 mg to adult ED patients experiencing headache following a minor head injury result in a 23 mm or more decrease in pain severity, as measured on a 10 cm visual analogue scale, compared to placebo?"
Dr. Juan Ronco:
Stress hyperglycemia and relative insulin resistance commonly occur in critically ill patients. Recently, Van den Berghe et al. Demonstrated substantial mortality benefits (a relative risk reduction of 34%) with strict maintenance of euglycemia (serum glucose 4.4 to 6.1 mmol/L) in intensive care unit (ICU) patients. The patients studied in that trial had an average APACHE II score of 9, and were disproportionately post-cardiac surgery patients (63% of all patients), a patient population wherein the benefit of strict glucose control has already been well demonstrated. It is not clear whether the benefit of strict euglycemia extends to a sicker cohort of patients, or to patients whose disease is primarily non-cardiac in nature. We therefore hypothesize that strict glucose control in the critically ill improves mortality. We propose to conduct a pilot study followed by a randomized trial, comparing strict euglycemia (4.0 to 6.0 mmol/L) against the more typical glucose range achieved in critically ill patients (9.0 to 11.0 mmol/L).
Dr. Garth Warnock:
To develop an optimal protocol for cryopreservation of human islets used for clinical islet transplant at Vancouver General Hospital. Preliminary data generated from this study will be used to strengthen applications for research grants and other sources of funding, with a goal of establishing a permanent human islet tissue bank that will serve the UBC/VGH clinical islet transplant program and British Columbians with type I diabetes who are eligible for islet transplant.
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