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Staff profiles

Dr Tom Hellyer

Senior Clinical Fellow/Hon Consultant

Background

I am a clinician scientist in Intensive Care Medicine.

My clinical training in intensive care medicine was based in Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, James Cook University Hospital and Sunderland Royal Hospital, amongst other NHS hospitals in the North East of England. I undertook my PhD under the supervision of Professor John Simpson, evaluating a novel biomarker-based diagnostic for ventilator-associated pneumonia. I was awarded the prestigious Gold Medal award from the Intensive Care Society for this body of work. I continued my postdoctoral research as an NIHR clinical lecturer. I was appointed to Senior Clinical Fellow and Honorary Consultant post through the Newcastle Health Innovation Partners in 2022. My clinical practice is based in the Royal Victoria Infirmary, Intensive Care Unit (ward 38).

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Research

My research focuses on improving antibiotic stewardship in critically ill patients. Patients are often admitted to intensive care with severe infections and are at risk of healthcare-associated infections. Antibiotics are lifesaving to these patients but the overuse of antibiotics carries significant harms including increasing antimicrobial resistance, drug toxicity and antibiotic-associated infection (such as Clostridium difficile). Striking the balance of effectively treating patients while avoiding harms is challenging for critically ill patients.

My PhD focused on diagnostics, aiming to identify patients who truly have infections who would benefit from antibiotics. I evaluated a novel biomarker-based test to rule-out ventilator-associated pneumonia. This was tested in a multi-centre validation study and a randomised controlled trial.

My research continues to strive for optimised antibiotic stewardship in critically ill patients through the following projects:  

RISC-sepsis (NIHR128374)

This project is an NIHR EME funded study that is an embedded mechanistic study within a larger NIHR HTA funded trial (ADAPT-sepsis led by Professor Paul Dark, University of Manchester). Within RISC-sepsis, we carry out detailed immune profiling of patients with sepsis to identify patients with sepsis-induced immune dysfunction and then link these immune profiles to clinical outcomes within the larger trial. This study will determine whether immune dysfunction impacts the effectiveness of antibiotic stewardship interventions. This project is managed by Warwick Clinical Trials Unit.

@RISCSepsis

SHORTER trial (NIHR134101)

This NIHR HTA funded trial will be a large, pragmatic randomised controlled trial with an embedded process evaluation. The trial will address the question of whether short, fixed-course antibiotics are safe and effective in critically ill patients with sepsis. The intervention will be a 5-day course of antibiotics (choice of antibiotic according to local practice) and the outcome measures will be mortality and overall antibiotic use measured at 28 days. The trial will include over 2000 patients recruited from 50 ICUs. Recruitment is planned to commence in early 2023. This project is managed by Newcastle Clinical Trials Unit.

Publications