Meet Dr Sainath Raman
CCRG collaborator Dr Sainath Raman is a Senior Medical Officer, Paediatric Intensive Care at Queensland Children's Hospital, Brisbane.
Dr Raman and CCRG Research Fellow Dr Nchafatso Obonyo as guests editors for the paediatric sepsis topic in Frontiers of Paediatrics Journal and collaborate on our sepsis research studies.
We spoke with Dr Raman ahead of World Sepsis Day to learn more about his research.
What led you to study sepsis and intensive care more broadly?
Sepsis is difficult to recognise and can be fulminant. Unfortunately, it results in significant mortality and morbidity. Many of the interventions we use in paediatric sepsis lack evidence.
Your research focuses mainly on paediatrics - why do you think sepsis research is children is lacking?
Septic shock can be especially fulminant in children. Parents are very distressed in this phase of the child’s treatment pathway, therefore recruiting young patients into research studies is difficult.
Generally children may be malnourished (in low resource settings) and have a developing/under developed immune system, and often the history of the health concerns or treatment to date may be unclear. Children are also more resilient until they are not - they may look well and go unrecognised as being septic for some time.
What research trial are you currently working on?
I am currently working with The University of Queensland’s Associate Professor Kristen Gibbons, Senior Epidemiologist, from the Child Health Research Centre, Faculty of Medicine, on a multinational trial, investigating if vitamin C + hydrocortisone vs hydrocortisone alone vs standard care can reduce time free of vasopressors in children with septic shock.
And finally, what is an interesting fact about sepsis that people may be surprised to learn?
Sepsis is bad – millions of deaths worldwide annually. Globally, a child dies from sepsis every 10 seconds and in Australia a child dies every week. But if recognised and treated appropriately in time, the outcomes are brilliant.
Above: Associate Professor Kristen Gibbons (left) and CCRG collaborator Dr Sainath Ramam, Child Health Research Centre, Faculty of Medicine, The University of Queensland.
The potential benefit of reviewing septic shock treatments
With an estimated incidence of 49 million cases annually of sepsis and a 20% death rate in the developed world, this research has enormous implications for the health outcomes of millions of people. The continuation of this important research would not be possible without the support of The Common Good and their donors. When you support The Common Good, you are backing incredible, talented researchers whose work will hopefully inform changes to how septic shock is treated, which could quite literally save millions of lives worldwide.