PhD Studentship: NIHR Exeter BRC PhD Studentship - Investigating Predictors of Chronification of Post-surgical Pain using Data Mining and Qualitative Interviews: An International Mixed Methods Study

Project description

Background:

Chronic pain has been identified as the second biggest contributor to the global burden of disease (after mental health) and can be caused by surgery, for example through nerve injury. Chronic post-surgical pain (defined as persistent pain at least six months after surgery) can affect up to a third of all patients undergoing surgery. While multiple risk factors have been discussed, most of them have not been validated.

Aims and objectives:

Aim of the project is to use a mixed-methods approach to solidify evidence for proposed risk factors of chronic post-surgical pain and to potentially uncover additional candidate risk factors. The project will be split into two subprojects with distinct objectives:

Subproject 1: Mining of existing multi-centre datasets to validate established candidate risk factors in independent datasets and identify additional candidates using traditional statistics and machine learning.

Subproject 2: Leading qualitative interviews with patients undergoing surgery at Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital before, shortly after, three and six months after surgery to identify individually perceived risk factors.

Project plan:

In subproject 1, the student will work closely with our collaboration partners at leading positions of international post-surgical pain consortia (Pain-OUT, IMI-PainCare PROMT). Through these, multicentre, multivariate datasets will be provided and analysed using a staggered approach of a) reproducing previous findings of predictors of chronic post-surgical pain in independent datasets, and b) identifying potential new candidates. The student will use both traditional statistics and machine learning approaches.

NIHR Exeter BRC Commitment

This Studentship will be nested within the National Institute of Health and Care Research Exeter Biomedical Research Centre (NIHR Exeter BRC), hosted by the Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust in partnership with the University of Exeter and in collaboration with South West NHS organisations. The first of its kind for the South West peninsula, the Centres fundamental objective is to improve health outcomes for patients and the public by translating scientific breakthroughs into potential new treatments, diagnostics and medical technologies.

This studentship will provide the opportunity to work with world-leading researchers and have access to state-of-the-art facilities. The NIHR Exeter BRC are committed to developing and nurturing a diverse and rich pipeline of talented researchers by equipping them with the knowledge and skills to excel and contribute significantly to the local and national economy via the delivery of high-quality and impactful translational biomedical research. Expertise will be harnessed from across the partnership to deliver the best possible training and career development opportunities, with the student provided the opportunity to be embedded in a rich research culture, with a growing body of early career researchers.

We are delighted to have already recruited some exceptionally talented researchers at various career stages to our NIHR Exeter BRC, including  Senior Investigator Fellows, Translational Fellows and our first cohort of PhD students who started with us in September.