Department of Anaesthesia of Cambridge University

Since the University Department of Anaesthesia was formally established in 1991, it has established a substantial research presence in Addenbrooke's Hospital with programmes of research in acute neurosciences, intensive care and mapping anaesthetic action in the brain. The programmes have secured substantial grant funding.

Graduate students benefit from the juxtaposition of clinical and basic research that spans several scientific disciplines, all within the Department. Their research involves neurobiologists, cell biologists, radiochemists and radiation physicists on one hand and clinical intensivists, experimental neuroscientists and neuropsyschologists on the other. The work is often focused on the brain and addresses both mechanisms and function, so most of their students discover that the work is exciting, relevant and of clinical importance.

Key research areas

• Clinical management of acute brain injury (trauma/stroke) (DK Menon)
• Metabolic and physiological imaging in clinical brain injury with positron emission tomography and magnetic resonance (DK Menon/JP Coles)
• Functional imaging in recovery from coma (DK Menon and JP Coles)
• Neuroinflammation in clinical brain ischaemia and trauma (DK Menon)
• Mechanisms and functional mapping of anaesthetic action (A Absalom and DK Menon)
• Experimental brain injury (J Beech)
• Primary and stem cell transplantation in the CNS (J Beech)
• GABA receptor biology in brain inflammation and repair
• (DW Wheeler/JS Beech)
• Clinical safety measurement and optimisation (DW Wheeler)
• Modelling oxygen delivery device performance (DW Wheeler)
• Metabolic dysfunction in critical illness (CL Reid and DK Menon)

Research collaborations

On the Addenbrooke's Site, research programmes involve collaborations in the context of the Wolfson Brain Imaging Centre (with Departments of Neurosurgery, Psychiatry and Stroke Medicine, and with the MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit).

Their experimental work has been based on the Brain Repair Centre and has also involved collaborations with Professor Price's group in the Institute of Psychiatry in London and with Dr Grainger's group in the Department of Medicine at Cambridge. They also have close clinical research collaborations at Addenbrooke's and Papworth Hospital.

The activities of the Department have had a substantial impact outside the Clinical School in the NHS, both locally in the Trust and across the region. The Department has provided research opportunities for over 60 NHS Specialist Registrars (SpRs) in attachments, which have resulted in over 120 papers, chapters and abstracts.

Further information:

• www.medschl.cam.ac.uk/anaesthetics/