HIS role in developing a medical discovery that has saved countless lives has seen Bathurst Base Hospital’s intensive care unit director Professor Brendan Smith named as a NSW finalist in the quest to find the Australian of the Year.
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Professor Smith has been selected for his contribution to medical innovation.
Considered a world leader in haemodynamics, he is credited with a medical discovery that has been responsible for one of the biggest reductions in patient mortality rates in the history of medicine.
As an expert in all things relating to blood flow and pressure, Professor Smith and his team at Bathurst Base Hospital were the first to use a non-invasive piece of scanning technology to test whether a patient is suffering from septic shock, or blood poisoning, in its earliest stages.
Professor Smith said it had been suspected for some time that if septic shock could be identified in its early stages, the patient had a chance of surviving it.
His scanning technology can recognise sepsis up to 18 hours before the symptoms occur.
Until Professor Smith developed the use of an Ultra Sonic Cardio Output Monitor (USCOM), the only way to determine that a person was septic was by running cardiac catheters through a hole in the neck down into a vein, through the heart and into the lungs. It was dangerous and not a procedure to be undertaken lightly.
USCOM uses doppler technology like a police radar. It allows medical staff to look from the neck or the side of the chest to the heart to measure the speed of blood flow.
When sepsis is present in adults the blood flow is much faster than normal.
“It provided us with a way of putting the fire out with a bucket before it became an inferno,” he said.
The practice has cut the sepsis mortality rate from more than 40 per cent to under seven per cent and could save hundreds of thousands of lives annually.
Ever since making this discovery, Professor Smith has been travelling the globe teaching his diagnostic technique in some of the world’s top hospitals.
Not one to stand on ceremony, the local medico yesterday described his nomination as “bloody awesome”.
He was also quick to share the credit.
“Let’s not lose sight of the fact that it’s the team that created this opportunity,” he said.
Professor Smith said when advised of the honour, he initially thought someone was winding him up.
“I was absolutely gobsmacked,” he said.
“I don’t care what happens from now on, I can’t think of any greater honour than what has already been given to me.”
Professor Smith grew up in a village in the UK, and later became an Australian citizen.
“To come from the other side of the world and find that I am considered a fair dinkum Aussie – well, I appreciate that more than they realise,” he said.
“To be so accepted here is pretty good, but to be nominated for one of the country’s highest honours – that moved me to tears.”
