October 5, 2018Dr Yin Lim, Northern Health’s Consultant Haematologist has embarked on a research journey looking at blood clot formations and a test which would predict an impending event before it happens.
“When patients ask us if they will get a blood clot again, we can tell them that there is a 30% chance of getting a clot in the next 10 years. This test aims to predict the clot formation and give patients a more precise answer,” she said.
Dr Lim is a passionate researcher and mentor, and had her first exposure to research as a medical student, continuing to be active in research during her basic and advanced physician training.
In the last twelve months, she has embarked on a PhD research journey, as a recipient of the prestigious National Heart Medical Research Council (NHMRC) scholarship and a co-recipient of the Heart Foundation scholarship.
During Research Week, Dr Lim’s research will be showcasing her work on global coagulation assays. She says she is passionate about this field, as currently labs are not able to look at formation of blood clots as a whole. What current tests can show now is only the first 5% of the actual formation.
“The aim for me is to try to see whether there’s a better predictor of patient’s risk in developing blood clot complications. Currently, coagulation testing doesn’t allow us to do that. If we could predict a person’s risk of developing a heart attack, stroke or deep vein thrombosis or blood clot in the lung, we could do something to prevent it from happening,” she said.
Dr Lim is now ten months into her PhD and her work is looking at patients with cardiovascular risk of developing heart attacks and strokes. She is using tests to also look at patients with thromboembolism, with blood clots in veins and lungs. From this project, there will be a poster during Research Week, as well as an oral presentation by Dr Lim’s medical student.
Patients with malignancies are also being looked at, investigating how they form blood clots. There will be another presentation stemming from this project as well.
“I closely work with other departments like obstetrics, renal, endocrinology, vascular medicine and anaesthetics. With Associate Professor Lisa Hui, our joint student will be presenting on global coagulation assays in obstetrics in term pregnancies,” she said.
In terms of scope of work presented during Research Week, Dr Lim is a supervisor to three medical students, a fellow and scientists, adding up to four posters and four oral presentations.
Be sure to check out the amazing speakers during Research Week at Northern Health from 8 – 12 October.
