Dr. John Sapp received one of four 2024 Maritime Heart Centre Innovation Fund grants.
This past year, your generosity supported granting to four innovative projects focusing on cardiac care issues in Nova Scotia through the QEII Foundation’s Maritime Heart Centre Innovation Fund.
Dr. Pieter de Jager received a $50,000 grant to support his team implementing an Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERSA) program for heart patients at the QEII Health Sciences Centre. The program aims to accelerate recovery and reduce complications after cardiac procedures, help teach patients how to prevent infections, and encourage movement sooner after surgery. Dr. de Jager believes this program will make the QEII a national leader in surgical care.
Shared care decision-making is at the forefront of Dr. Greg Hirsch’s winning proposal. The $50,000 he received will go to the upgrading and modernization of an individualized cardiac surgery risk calculator — a tool used by healthcare providers to estimate a patient's likelihood of experiencing specific adverse outcomes — and a decision aid generator. Dr. Hirsch believes the upgraded tool will allow cardiac patients to feel better supported and involved in decision-making around their care.
Establishing a special lab at the QEII Health Sciences Centre to study the heart condition known as ventricular tachycardia (VT) received over $49,000 from the Maritime Heart Centre Innovation Fund. VT is a type of abnormal heart rhythm where the heart beats much faster than normal because of electrical signals starting in the lower chambers of the heart instead of the usual pathway. Dr. John Sapp applied for this funding as the lab will support a world-first multi-centre cohort study into the condition as well as future research in that area.
The final successful pitch supports a pilot pre-rehabilitation program for patients who are striving to make healthier choices ahead of a cardiac procedure known as abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA). By optimizing patient health before surgery rather than focus on it after, grant recipient Dr. Sam Jessula believes it will allow patients the opportunity to improve surgical outcomes. The program will focus on five areas, including exercise, smoking cessation support, nutritional counseling, psychological preparation and patient education.
Since being established in 2017, the QEII Foundation’s donor-funded Maritime Heart Centre Innovation Fund has awarded 25 grants to medical teams at the QEII totaling $1,050,589 and counting. The fund provides otherwise inaccessible research dollars for QEII physicians and researchers in the cardiac field.
