Pictured: Professor Regli-von Ungern-Sternberg, Professor Lee Yong Lim and Associate Professor David Sommerfield
A research team dedicated to making anaesthesia and surgery safer and more comfortable for babies and children has been awarded an inaugural Byron Kakulas Medal by WA’s Perron Institute.
The medal – honouring Perron Institute founding Director, the late distinguished neuropathologist Emeritus Professor Byron Kakulas AO – acknowledges people who have had a transformational impact on the health of Western Australians, whether through medical research, clinical practice, health policy, service delivery or community outreach.
Three members of the multi-disciplinary Perioperative Medicine Team – a high-achieving collaboration between The Kids Research Institute Australia, the Anaesthesia and Pain Medicine Department at Perth Children’s Hospital, and The University of Western Australia’s Laboratory for Drug Delivery – were awarded one of two inaugural medals at a special ceremony this week.
Perron Institute Patron, His Excellency The Honourable Chris Dawson AC, APM, Governor of Western Australia, and Mrs Valerie Kakulas, wife of the late Professor Kakulas, presented the medal to Professor Britta Regli-von Ungern-Sternberg, Associate Professor David Sommerfield and Professor Lee Yong Lim.
Professor Regli-von Ungern-Sternberg is head of the Perioperative Medicine Team at The Kids, Foundation Chair of Paediatric Anaesthesia at UWA, and a consultant anaesthetist at PCH. Dr Sommerfield is an anaesthetist and pain medicine specialist at PCH and a Clinical Associate Professor with the UWA Medical School, while Professor Lim is a Professor of Pharmaceutics at UWA.
The team has the most active patient-centred paediatric anaesthesia research program in Australia, responsible for innovations including the development of a chocolate-based delivery system to mask the bitter taste of some medications, to improve the experience of taking medicine by children before and after surgical procedures.
In another project, undertaken in collaboration with paediatric centres around the world, the team has investigated the safest method for intubating infants and neonates during surgery.
Professor John Finlay-Jones, chair of the independent selection committee, said the inspiring team’s achievements had greatly impressed the adjudicators.
“It is committed to optimising and personalising clinical care, effective periprocedural anxiety management, developmentally appropriate communication and excellent pain management,” Professor Finlay-Jones said.
In transforming the research space, the team collaborates closely with consumers, surgeons, physicians, nurses, allied health professionals, engineers, scientists, statisticians and health economists across multiple medical and academic institutions.
The other inaugural Byron Kakulas Medal went to a renowned WA ophthalmologist who led the development of a game-changing intervention to treat the eye disease, glaucoma, which causes irreversible vision loss due to damage to the optic nerve.
Professor Dao-Yi Yu AM, from UWA’s Medical School, Centre for Ophthalmology and Visual Science and head of the Lions Eye Institute's Physiology and Pharmacology group, was recognised for the minimally invasive surgical system he developed with his team.
For more information on the Byron Kakulas Medal, see here.