The SRMRC has successfully completed a trial looking at the systemic response of patients with head injuries.
The Systemic Inflammatory Immune Response (Neurosurgical) Study (SIReNS) has reached its recruitment target of 31 civilian patients, all of whom were brought to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham after July 31. Analysis of blood and urine samples from these patients will expand doctors’ understanding of how a patient’s body responds to a head injury.
The trial is led by QEHB neurosurgeon Tony Belli, a leading researcher and clinician working in the field of traumatic brain injury.
Mr Belli says the trial is good news for patients and should provide valuable information for clinicians all over the world: “We are very keen to characterise the way in which the immuno-inflammatory and endocrine systems respond to severe trauma.
“By better understanding these systems we can manage the care of these patients more precisely, and hopefully that will lead to better outcomes.
“The SRMRC trauma research nursing team has worked very hard with our colleagues in the Emergency Department and Critical Care to recruit patients into this study, so it’s a tribute to all involved that we have reached our recruitment target so quickly.
“That means we will have results faster and, we hope, be able to provide valuable information to clinicians who are making difficult decisions every day about the care of seriously injured patients.”
SIReNS is an extension of an earlier study called Systemic Inflammatory Immune Response (SIRS), which looked at the way these systems react in seriously injured patients without head injuries.
The immuno-inflammatory system is a set of interrelated functions of the body which respond to infection and injury. It acts as a protective mechanism to remove both the initial cause of cell injury, such as micro-organisms and foreign bodies, and the consequences of such injury, such as dead cells and tissues.
The endocrine system is a system of glands, each of which secretes a type of hormone directly into the bloodstream to regulate the body.
The researchers aim to be able to characterise the nature and extent of changes in the way the immune system responds and hormones released in the body following trauma.T
- Click here for more information on the SIReNS study
- Click here for more information on the SIRS study
