Bond Uni’s Loai Albarqouni is an NHMRC emerging leadership fellow

Reducing drug and surgical treatments is the aim of NHMRC emerging leadership fellow, Bond University’s Loai Albarqouni.

Bond University's Dr Loai Albarqouni, who has been awarded funding from the NHMRC's Investigator Grant scheme. Picture: Cavan Flynn

A Bond University scientist has been awarded a $650,000 National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Investigator Grant to study non-drug treatments in primary health care.

Loai Albarqouni, a postdoctoral research fellow in Bond’s Institute for Evidence-Based Healthcare, has been named as an NHMRC Emerging Leadership Fellow.

One example of a condition that might respond to a non-medical intervention is “glue ear”, otherwise known as middle ear infection.

“One option is to go through a surgical procedure inserting a tube in [the patient’s] eardrum with all the burden of surgical procedures,” Dr Albarqouni said. “But there is another simple low-cost evidence based option, as simple as asking the child to blow up a special balloon with their nose, that could be as effective as undergoing surgery.

“But these are not commonly practised in primary care. We would like to increase its uptake from the clinician side by more prescriptions as well as the patient side.”

Exercise for lower back pain and behavioural therapy for depression were other examples.

Dr Albarqouni is a medical doctor and epidemiologist whose research expertise includes evidence synthesis, evidence-based practice, shared decision making, and overdiagnosis and overtreatment.

He will consult patients and clinicians with aim of producing evidence-based guides for treatments, and working out ways to have them adopted.

“There is high-quality evidence showing that these kinds of interventions could be as good as medication, without most of the side effects that come with drug intervention. We need to have evidence-based easy-to-use guides for patients and clinicians which might help in achieving more sustainable healthcare.”