LHCH awarded prestigious fellowship to improve treatment of Ventricular Tachycardia (VT)
Congratulations to Justin Chiong, Cardiology Specialty Registrar and Academic Clinical Fellow in Cardiology who has been awarded a Clinical Research Training Fellowship by the British Heart Foundation. This is an impressive achievement and even more so as it’s the first time a fellowship of its kind has been awarded to a researcher at LHCH. The prestigious grant will provide the funding for the research costs and consumables necessary to deliver the DYNAMITE-VT study. The DYNAMITE-VT study aims to improve the way we treat Ventricular Tachycardia (VT) for our patients, we hope that by better guiding ablation, we can reduce recurrence, hospitalisation, the need to redo procedures, and defibrillator shocks for patients.
Ventricular tachycardia (or VT) is a life-threatening abnormal heart rhythm, and one of the commonest causes of sudden death. It can occur in people who have scar tissue in their hearts, most commonly from a previous heart attack. Patients with VT (or at high risk of developing it) are offered an implantable cardiac defibrillator. This can deliver a lifesaving shock when VT is detected, but can be sudden, unpredictable, and painful, causing significant anxiety.
For many patients, the recommended way to treat VT and reduce defibrillator shocks is through catheter ablation. However, over 1 in 3 patients experience a recurrence of their VT within a year of the procedure. One of the key reasons for this is that it is often difficult to know where exactly to ablate within the heart and therefore the delivery of treatment can be imprecise.
At LHCH, Dr Vishal Luther, Consultant Cardiologist and team have developed a new way to better identify the areas we should be targeting which is a process we’ve termed Dynamic Voltage Mapping. It uses routinely collected electrical data from within the heart to create a specialised and personalised map for each individual patient. In our preliminary testing, this appears to help accurately guide ablation to successfully treat VT.
The DYNAMITE-VT (Dynamic Voltage Mapping to Personalise the Ventricular Tachycardia Substrate) study will formally evaluate this technique by means of a randomised clinical trial. The aim is to recruit 40 patients, of which, 20 will have Dynamic Voltage Maps available to help guide ablation, allowing us to compare how helpful and accurate it is, compared to conventional methods.
Justin Chiong spoke of this achievement:
“I am honoured and grateful to receive this award which was only made possible through an enormous team effort. I am particularly grateful to Dr. Vishal Luther, my supervisor, who has mentored, guided and worked with me tirelessly to put together this grant - the entire process has taken over a year! I’m looking forward to working with him and my other excellent co-supervisors (Consultant Cardiologists Professor Gupta, Professor Fairbairn and Professor Lip) over the course of the next few years, who each will bring their own expertise.
“The fellowship, and the DYNAMITE-VT study, builds on over three years of pilot data and foundational work established by previous Fellows at LHCH (Peter Calvert, Mark Mills).
“We have also received an enormous amount of support from Professor Jay Wright, Director of Research and the Research Team at LHCH (Shirley Pringle, Martika Taylor, Gareth Stephens, Laurence Tidbury), the LHCH Research Clinic (Professor Rod Stables), and the Patient Research Ambassador (Keith Wilson).
“Externally we also had collaborative help from the Liverpool Joint Research Office, Liverpool Centre for Cardiovascular Sciences, the University of Liverpool and many international experts in the field of VT who helped to critically appraise and support our study.”
Dr Vishal Luther, Consultant Cardiologist added:
“We are thrilled that Justin has been awarded this Clinical Research Training Fellowship by the British Heart Foundation. This will equip Justin with the knowledge and skills necessary through a formal research training programme, a three-year PhD in Cardiovascular Sciences with the University of Liverpool, and supervision to help run DYNAMITE-VT and studies at LHCH in the future.
“The award, from British Heart Foundation, recognises the high level of quality research carried out at LHCH from a nationally competitive funding body. The fellowship proposal was extensively reviewed by expert reviewers in the field and a BHF Fellowships Committee panel, receiving highly favourable feedback so we proud of this.
“LHCH has an international reputation for pioneering VT research. Dynamic Voltage Mapping was developed and initially evaluated here at LHCH. The DYNAMITE-VT study represents the next stage of this work and testing this technique prospectively through a randomised controlled trial. We intend to run it first as a pilot study and subsequently plan to design and carry out a larger study in the future.”
Dr Vishal Luther, Consultant Cardiologist is pictured above with Justin Chiong, Cardiology Specialty Registrar and Academic Clinical Fellow in Cardiology