Australasian Collaboration in Endocarditis - ACE
Breaking news! ACE is proud to announce a Transnational Endocarditis Symposium as a hybrid Conference For Saturday October 12th 2024 For more information use link below to dedicated page.
Link to 2024 endocarditis Symposium
The centrepiece of this will be the unveiling of the ACE IE registry.
For dedicated registry page use link below.
Collaborations/ IE registry design
ACE is also proud to encourage Australasian involvement in ISCVID.
Please use link to dedicated webpage below.
Steering Committee Team
Eugene Athan
Dylan Bartholomeusz
Nuclear Medicine Physician and Gastroenterologist. Royal Adelaide Hospital. Head Nuclear Medicione, SA Medical Imaging.
Jayme Bennetts
Julie Bradley
Alicia Chan
Cardiologist. Central Adelaide Local Health Network. SA.
Sharon Chen
Infectious Diseases Physician Westmead (NSW)
Microbiologist ICPMR New South Wales Pathology
Kathryn Colebourne
Ash Hardikar
Robert Horvath
Infectious Diseases Physician, The Prince Charles Hospital. Microbiologist, Pathology Queensland.
Siong Hui
Infectious Disease Physician. Fiona Stanley Hospital and Charles Gaairdner Hospital, Perth WA.
Alison Keed
Joshua Mahadevan
Lachlan Marshall
Mbakise (Pula) Matebele
Intensivist, The Prince Charles Hospital, Brisbane.
Hugh McGann
Infectious Diseases Physician. Waikato, Heath New Zealand
Renjy Nelson
Infectious Diseases Physician. The Queen Elizabeth Hospital and Royal Adelide Hospital. SA.
Veronica Playle
Infectious Diseases Physician and Microbiologist, Middelmore Hospital, Auckland NZ.
Chris Robson
Infectious Diseases Physician. Victorian Heart Hospital, Monash Health.
Indy Sandaradura
John Sedgwick
Mitra Shirazi
Emily Tucker
Kanthi Vemuri
Infectious Diseases Physician, The Prince Charles Hospital, Brisbane.
Livia Williams
ACE Preamble
Endocarditis outcomes have only marginally improved since the 1980s, with a mortality rate of approximately 20%.
According to the ABS, in 2021 161 Australians had endocarditis listed on their death certificates.
Using 20% mortality rate as estimate, there are approximately 800 cases of IE diagnosed annually currently.
This compares to 2011 when 99 were certified.
This apparent increase in incidence is greater than the Australian population increase over the same period,which is part of a global phenomenon thought largely due to an increase of “IE risk populations”
There is a need to improve outcomes further as ~ 20% is a high mortality rate when compared to other infective conditions. ACE’s aim is to improve these outcomes (with an aspiration goal of “single-digit mortality rates”). As IE is such a complex condition with multiple variables, this process will be gradual and require significant levels of collaborations to achieve statistically meaningful results. It is unlikely any single Australian State would be able to provide these numbers, so a multi-centre multi-state collaboration appears the realistic way forward. Australia and NZ together have a population that will soon reach 30 million. In comparison, Scandinavia with it’s world-leading registries has a combined population of ~ 25 million.
Part of the efforts to improve outcomes includes registries which are not only for subtle management assessments but also to detect changes in epidemiology and to enable benchmarking and comparison between centres.
ACE also hopes to not only standardize outcomes in IE between centres, but also to improve awareness (both in the medical world and to the general public) of this disease, to aid in possible prevention (Q fever an example of this) but also early detection (greater recognition of when to suspect it, collect blood cultures etc) and to improve management (including access to TOEs other imaging modalities and CTS).
IE is one of the most complex conditions, requiring the input and co-ordination of multi specialties to maximize outcomes. ACE promotes the use of MDTs for “complex” cases.
In terms of research and management, IE is a subset of sepsis which is a WHO priority. Improvements in IE may be extrapolated to potentially improvements in other sepsis cases.
The various ACE projects will de described in their individual sections.
ACE Committees
ID-Micro section of Steering Committee.
Eugene Athan, Sharon Chen, Robert Horvath (chair), Siong Hui, Alison Keed, Hugh McGann, Renjy Nelson, Veronica Playle, Chris Robson, Indy Sandaradura, Emily Tucker,and Kanthi Vemuri.
Cardiology section of Steering Committee.
John Sedgwick, Alicia Chan, Julie Bradley, Mitra Shirazi.
Cardiothoracic Surgery (CTS) section of Steering Committee
Jayme Bennetts, Livia Williams, Lachlan Marshall, Ash Hardikar
Stroke medicine section of Steering Committee
Kathryn Colebourne, Joshua Mahadevan.
ICU section of Steering Committee
Mbakise (Pula) Matebele
Nuclear-imaging section of steering committee
Dylan Bartholomeusz
Other Sections TBA.
National IE Registry Proposal
ACE proposes a national registry to improve outcomes, not only by comparing specific organisms or therapeutics but also by enabling benchmarking between centres. Access to CTS and TOE in some centres may be a barrier to best outcomes, and this would enable comparisons to be made to improve logistics.
This would be a voluntary registry, expected to largely encompass centres that have IDPs. Data fields required would be dependant on logistics. Centres where a single physician is responsible for their registry would only be expected to fill in “essential data fields”. Larger centres with possibly MDT data collection would have extra data fields to provide additional information.
Progress of this will be detailed on the dedicated web-page (“click here”).
ACE Members List
To improve collaborations and have points of contact between participating centres (and also those with specific interests in IE such as academics) we have a members list displayed (“click here”).
Other ACE Projects
For POET-2 Click here.
Improving patient/clinician information.
The information sheets displayed on the ieQ website will be ammended for ACE.
Client/consumer representatives will soon be appointed.
Other projects will be listed as develop.
ACE news and photos
The first week of March was a huge week for ACE.
We thank RCPA update for an endocarditis MDT session which was well received.
The conference was also an opportunity for participation in Royal Adelaide Hospital's (RAH's) endocarditis MDT.
RAH's MDT is state-of the art, a credit to our South Australian members!
RCPA has been a fantastic endorser of ACE!
The conference also marked the debut of the ACE banner, which hopefully will de displayed at a few locations this year.