KCHC-AR-2023 Final Signed - Flipbook - Page 21
Better treatments and care for more people
We hope to develop
bespoke disease
management strategies,
tailored to the individual
– because everyone’s heart
valve disease is a little
different.
Dr Apu Bharucha
Devising ways to individualise treatments
Translating research into world-leading care
We have continued to support an important project
exploring how bioengineering, 3D printing technologies
and Artificial Intelligence (AI) could enable tailor-made
treatments for people with heart valve disease.
In 2021/22, we awarded a multi-year grant to give
Consultant Neurosurgeon Mr Aminul Ahmed protected
time to research ways to improve outcomes for patients
with traumatic brain injury and spinal cord injury.
Mitral regurgitation is a serious heart valve condition
often seen in elderly and frail patients with multiple
illnesses. For them, in particular, the risks of undergoing
conventional open heart surgery are too high. On top
of the difficulties in predicting whether a patient will
benefit from surgery, mitral valve disease also varies
from person to person, making other newer and less
invasive treatments expensive and difficult.
During 2022/23, he liaised with experts from across
the globe to design the world’s first clinical trial of a
gene therapy for spinal cord injury. His recent analysis
of patients who have undergone surgery for lower
back pain will soon become the largest-ever study of
treatment outcomes for this group of patients.
Our grant of £22,000 includes support for Dr Apu
Bharucha, a structural heart intervention research
fellow, whose team works in partnership with scientists
in Canada to create life-size 3D printed models of
patients’ mitral valves and cavities from ultrasound
images. The team will now study the 3D replicas in-situ
in order to use machine learning (AI) to model disease,
practice less-invasive surgery and plot potential
treatment outcomes.
They plan to share their learnings via the development of
an open-source online library of mitral valve and cavity
images – the first of its kind in the world. This valuable
resource will enable other surgical teams, nationally and
internationally, to print 3D models for use in research
and training. The team also aims to help create a
national surgical training programme to teach others
how to use 3D printing technology and perform minimal
access mitral valve surgery.
Work is also underway to design a number of other
projects, including one that aims to use human live
neural tissue to study the repair potential of neural
stem cells and another that plans to explore the
development of minimally invasive robot assisted
neuroengineering therapies for neurological disorders.
The ultimate aim of this groundbreaking work is
to translate research into world-leading care for
neurosurgical patients at King’s.
We are proud to support
innovations that will greatly
improve patient experience and
bring the best care and treatment
to more people in King’s community,
especially those who are frail and
have complex conditions.
Gail Scott-Spicer
Charity Chief Executive
K I N G’ S CO L L E G E H O S P I TA L C H A R I T Y A N N UA L R E P O R T A N D A CCO U N T S 2 0 2 2 / 2 3
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