By Wendy Tuohy
Even while still in paramedic training, Kelsey Hibberd knew the statistics on people whose hearts had stopped being successfully revived and arriving safely in hospital.
“I have revived people multiple times, but the incidence of a patient being resuscitated and transported to hospital alive when they have had a cardiac arrest outside of hospital is incredibly low,” says the former intensive care nurse.
Paramedic Kelsey Hibberd is helping raise funds to fight heart disease.Credit: Luis Enrique Ascui
“It’s one thing to provide defibrillation and life-prolonging medications, such as adrenalin ... but [cardiac arrest] is very, very difficult to manage.”
Hibberd is also painfully familiar with the toll that heart disease, sudden cardiac arrest and heart failure take on thousands of Australians and their families every year.
One Australian dies of cardiovascular disease every 12 minutes. Many of those who die do not show signs their heart is at risk of stopping – a fact brought home to Hibberd mid-way through her paramedic training three years ago.
The morning after a happy family dinner at her parents’ home so they could introduce their new puppy to their four children, Hibberd received a call saying her father Chris, 59, was unconscious.
Hibberd and her father Chris, who could not be revived after cardiac arrest at the age of 59.
“I only lived a few minutes away and rushed down there, but the paramedics were finished up when I got there. They had already ceased resuscitation,” she says. “It was very unexpected ... he was not unwell in the weeks prior to that.” In fact, Chris had always been fit, healthy and active.
As her family embarked on the journey of grief, Hibberd realised she wanted to do what she could to support research into early detection of those who may be at risk of having a fatal cardiac event like her father’s.
She found the work of Professor Julie McMullen at the Heart Research Institute and began fund-raising to help boost groundbreaking research into identifying risk through blood tests and providing protective solutions likened to “exercise in a tablet”.
McMullen, head of the institute’s Heart Muscle Group, and colleagues will soon publish a paper examining if a blood test for a biomarker – related to a “good gene” – elevated in the heart with exercise can help identify those who are at greater risk of heart complications.
The gene in question promotes healthy enlargement of the heart when triggered by exercise, and its identification could lead to the development of preventive medications for those lacking in it, who may otherwise have gone on to have serious heart complications.
“This research is focused on a gene that we know is elevated in the heart with exercise, and is a protective gene,” McMullen said.
“If a biomarker of this protective gene is lower, that might tell you somebody is more susceptible to cardiac complications. We think if we can elevate genes critical for protection in exercise, that can be beneficial.”
Previous research has focused more on blocking bad genes in an effort to delay heart-failure progression, but it doesn’t necessarily improve heart function, she says.
McMullen hopes the work will lead to a reduction in the number of people struck down by unknown heart issues.
“That is the thing that’s so tragic, this unexpected loss of life we just have no idea about earlier.
“If we can intervene earlier, hopefully we can prevent tragic events from occurring.”
Professor Andre La Gerche, who leads the HEART Lab supported by St Vincent’s Institute of Medical Research and the Victor Chang Institute, said McMullen’s research could help lead to the development of pills to mimic the benefits of exercise on the heart.
By recognising exercise promotes good, healthy heart muscles in athletes, the new research poses the question, “Can we identify that molecule in anyone?” La Gerche says.
“If they could develop the magical blood test, we could give a tablet that would help the heart be healthy, as we see with exercise … to stop the heart going down a bad pathway by targeting it with medication. So it’s exercise in a tablet.”
Hibberd as a toddler with her father. After his unexpected death from cardiac arrest, she is determined to help fund prevention research.
Hibberd, who has raised more than $14,000 so far in her late father’s honour to help support the work of the Heart Research Institute, says she hopes more people get behind research that could offer a chance to people who may otherwise have poor heart outcomes.
“I used to work in intensive care and emergency as a nurse. The frustrating thing is people are coming in already affected by heart disease – we are providing important care, but what’s being done prior to that to try to detect it and prevent it?” she says.
McMullen is hopeful her work may provide an answer. “While the initial findings are promising, further research and validation is required to assess the potential of this biomarker.”
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