Study into unexplained sudden cardiac arrest recognised in multiple award win

Above: Dr Elizabeth Paratz

St Vincent’s cardiologist Dr Elizabeth Paratz has received four prestigious awards in one week for research she led into unexplained sudden cardiac arrest.

The multi award-winning study has enhanced care for people suffering out of hospital cardiac arrest and helped identify at-risk and vulnerable populations needing targeted support. These groups included young people, pregnant women, people living with mental illness, rural patients, people who suffer from obesity and people using illicit drugs.

Dr Paratz was announced as this year’s TJ Martin Award winner during St Vincent’s Melbourne Research Week. Now in its 19th year, the TJ Martin Award is presented to the author of the best PhD thesis completed by a St Vincent’s campus researcher over the past 18 months, as selected by a panel of independent judges.

In the same week, she won the Clinical Section of the 2024 Ralph Reader Prize. This award is presented by the Cardiac Society of Australia and New Zealand to early-career researchers. She also received the University of Melbourne Chancellor’s Prize for Excellence in a PhD thesis and the Faculty for Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences Deans Award for Excellence in the PhD Thesis. 

As a result of the research, Dr Paratz has co-led a first-of-its-kind, state-of-the-art clinic and registry in Victoria with the Head of Cardiovascular Research at St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne, Professor Andre La Gerche, to tackle sudden cardiac arrest.

“More than 3000 patients now form part of the End Unexplained Cardiac Death (EndUCD) registry and work has commenced to make it the world’s biggest cardiac arrest registry,” said Dr Paratz.

Getting to the heart of it

Out of hospital sudden cardiac arrest is one of the major causes of death worldwide, resulting in four million deaths a year. 20,000 cardiac arrests occur annually across Australia.

This three-year study involved extensive translational research to track patterns and assessed the largest big data set globally to date to address the issue of sudden cardiac arrest.

The data was sourced from Ambulance Victoria, various hospitals across the state and forensic agencies.

The End Unexplained Cardiac Death (EndUCD) registry uses big data to track patterns in patients who have suffered sudden cardiac arrest to enable better planning of interventions and strategies for prevention and management, while the clinic, which was nine months in the making, was co-designed with people who have lived experience of cardiac arrest.

The registry is now helping highlight valuable information that can be used to assist in identifying the risk factors of sudden cardiac arrest. It links ambulance, hospital and forensic data in all cases of sudden cardiac arrest for people under 50 living in Victoria to provide a complete overview of the patient journey throughout their cardiac arrest admissions and investigations. Presently it captures data from 2019 to 2021. Work is currently progressing to expand it retrospectively to capture 20 years of data.

International collaborations followed the EndUCD registry’s inception with SVHM’s research team supporting colleagues in Germany to set up a similar registry model.

The research has also supported national calls for wider defibrillator availability and programs to enhance storage of not-for-resuscitation and advanced care plans community-wide to prevent inappropriate ambulance call-outs.

The study was conducted in collaboration with Ambulance Victoria, the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute and University of Melbourne.