News

Aiming high for medical research

Published 20 March 2013

A medical student is climbing the slopes of Mount Everest to take part in ground-breaking research to improve survival rates of hospital patients.

Lucy Brennan, a first-year student at Brighton and Sussex Medical School (BSMS), run jointly by Brighton and Sussex universities, is part of a team researching the effects of hypoxia or lack of oxygen which many intensive care patients suffer.

Doctors, nurses and scientists are taking part in the project, organised by the charity Xtreme Everest 2, which will be based at a laboratory in the village of Namche Bazaar, on the slopes of Everest, 3,400 metres (11,000 feet) above sea level.

They will be leading a party of parents and children up to the laboratory to see how they adapt to low levels of oxygen. Lucy will be conducting tests on the children, some as young as eight.

Looking back on Namche from the Everest trail

One in five people receive intensive care treatment at some point in their lives in the UK. Of those, 40 per cent will die and despite intensive care being one of the most sophisticated areas of hospital care, there is still limited understanding of why some people survive and some die. Lack of oxygen reaching the body's vital organs is a common problem for patients.

Xtreme Everest is a team of intensive care doctors, nurses and scientists which conducts experiments at high altitude in order to develop novel therapies to improve the survival rates. Because it is very difficult to study patients in intensive care units because patients are ill, the team members often volunteer themselves as subjects.

One of Lucy's colleagues working on the slopes of Everest

This latest research will be collated at University College London (UCL) and a crew from the BBC Horizon science programme is scheduled to film the project for a documentary.

Lucy, who works part-time at UCL's Institute of Child Health and at Great Ormond Street Hospital, is considering going into paediatrics and specialising in respiratory medicine or anaesthesia when she graduates.

She, from Rustington, West Sussex, said: "I am enjoying my time at BSMS, though it's very busy fitting in two part time jobs as well as this upcoming research trek. It's extremely exciting thinking our research on Everest could help develop new treatments."

Lucy is holding fund-raising events to support her four-week expedition which starts 27 March. To sponsor her, go to www.justgiving.com/XtremeEverest2-LucyBrennan