Current Projects

There are about 60,000 sudden cardiac arrests each year in Canada but 95% of cardiac arrest patients do not survive. The most influential factor in predicting survival is whether a bystander witnesses the event and can alert emergency medical services. With 75% of cardiac arrests going unwitnessed, only 2% survive due to lack of detection. This project is part of our national CanSAVE research group.

Through his role with the BC Emergency Medicine Network, Centre for Advancing Health Scientist and St. Paul’s, Hospital, Dr. Jim Christenson leads a project that aims to improve emergency care in four remote Nuu-Chah-Nulth communities through community engagement, partnerships, and research. 
The project goal is to improve emergency care for remote First Nations communities.

The FRONTIER Trial – Field Randomization of NA-1 Treatment in Early Responders – was a multi-center, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, single-dose study initiated prehospital in the ambulance to evaluate the effectiveness of nerinetide in slowing or halting the damaging effects of stroke. Nerinetide, a drug not yet approved for clinical use, slows the process of neuronal cell death during ischemia caused by the stroke while definitive care is underway. Led by Dr. Christenson, the study was funded by Brain Canada and NoNO Inc. Inc.

A cohort study, funded by the COVID-19 Immunity Task Force, enrolling Canadian paramedics from BC to Ontario. The study is designed to evaluate infection-induced SARS-Cov-2 seroprevalence and occupational risks of paramedics in Canada, as well as investigating differences in immunogenicity between vaccine strategies. CORSIP participants complete health and occupational questionnaires, as well as provide blood samples over a 1-year period.

Opioid overdose has become an increasingly common cause of death in our communities. This projects seeks to identify the optimal treatment strategies for opioid-related cardiac arrest. With funding from Canadian Institutes Health Research, the investigation is collecting opioid-specific data from clinical records, and will link to provincial administrative datasets, including patient-level coroner investigations to provide a gold-standard definition for opioid-related deaths.

The EpiDose randomized controlled trial seeks to evaluate the effectiveness of a low cumulative dose of epinephrine compared to a standard cumulative dose of epinephrine during resuscitation from ventricular fibrillation (VF) or ventricular tachycardia (VT) in adult out-of-hospital cardiac arrest patients. The trial is based out of the University of Toronto, with BC as a study site, managed in partnership between BC Emergency Health Services and BC RESURECT.