Posted on July 6, 2004 at 2:26 p.m.
BIRMINGHAM, AL — The University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) has been named one of 10 Regional Coordinating Centers for Resuscitation in North America. UAB, the only designated center in the southeastern United States, will receive $3.5 million from the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) over the next five years to fund the core program and infrastructure.
The centers will attack the dismal outlook for people who require resuscitation to keep them alive when they are either severely injured or they suffer a cardiac heart attack in a location outside a hospital.
“In Alabama, the rate of survival for someone who has gone into cardiac arrest in a non-hospital setting is only about 1 percent,” said Dr. Thomas E. Terndrup, professor and chairman of the department of emergency medicine, who will serve as UAB’s principal investigator for the five-year project. “We plan to be a training center for professionals in many different specialties who are interested in research on problems involving resuscitation.”
Terndrup will guide the overall program and lead the research concerning cardiac arrest. Trauma surgeon Dr. Jeffrey D. Kerby, assistant professor of surgery, will be co-principal investigator and lead the project’s component that searches for ways to improve outcomes of severe injuries. “We want to develop techniques, products, or devices that will improve your chances of survival in the field before you get to the hospital and that also will reduce the chances of death during a later critical period when infection and sepsis might threaten,” Kerby said.
Funding for the program begins in September, with research protocols selected early in 2005.
UAB has considerable experience in areas to be covered by the new centers. Last year the emergency medicine department released final results of a five-year effort to provide public access to defibrillators for people who suffer heart attacks in public places. And UAB long has been involved in the coordinated system of emergency response in Jefferson and surrounding counties.
“The initial grant will fund infrastructure and core functions for us,” said Terndrup, “and will put us in position to apply for additional funding.”
Other centers will be at the University of Pittsburgh, Medical College of Wisconsin, Oregon Health & Science University, University of California San Diego, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, University of Iowa, University of Washington, St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, and Ottawa Health Research Unit. The University of Washington will also serve as the data coordinating center.