
Dr Mon Ohn
Nightowl
Clinician Research Fellowship
$422,315.98
2021 - 2023
Perth Children's Hospital
Dr Mon Ohn is a Paediatric Respiratory and Sleep Consultant Physician who serves as a Clinical Research Fellow within the Perioperative Medicine Team at the Telethon Kids Institute. Her interests focus is on sleep disorders in infants and children and in particular how Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) can negatively impact on surgical outcomes.
OSA is a common condition in paediatrics, and untreated OSA may have serious consequences for the child’s development and health. In addition, OSA is a well-known risk factor for adverse perioperative outcomes, for example, upper airway obstruction. Enlarged adenoids and tonsils are the commonest causes of childhood OSA, along with obesity and genetic predisposition. Adenotonsillectomy (an operation to remove both the adenoids and tonsils) is the recommended first-line treatment for most patients.
The risk of significant respiratory complications following tonsillectomy in a general paediatric population is 1%, while in patients with OSA, this risk escalates to about 20%. Identifying high-risk patients preoperatively has been challenging without knowledge of OSA presence and severity. While polysomnography serves as the gold standard for OSA diagnosis, its limited availability and resource demands make it impractical for routine clinical use. There was an urgent need to establish alternative, cost-effective, and feasible measures for assessing the severity of OSA in patients, which was precisely the focus of the Dr Mon Ohn Clinician Research Fellowship.
Dr Mon Ohn's fellowship focused on assessing surgery risks, particularly upper airway floppiness, which impacts breathing during surgery. Using a measure called pharyngeal closing pressure (PCLOSE), she identified its correlation with OSA in children and potential breathing complications. Dr Mon Ohn discovered that increased airway floppiness often indicates OSA, even pinpointing a specific PCLOSE value indicative of moderate-to-severe OSA. This research could help enhance pre-surgical preparations for children with OSA and result in clinical practice changes.
Dr Mon Ohn shared “This Raine Clinician Research fellowship I received, with help from both the Department of Health and the Raine Medical Research Foundation, has been a game-changer. We have been diving deep into preoperative screening for OSA in children, and the findings are promising. We are talking about using new tools like wrist-worn oximetry and studying pharyngeal closing pressure to really up our game in assessing children before surgery. Without this fellowship, I don't think I could've made such an impact in understanding OSA in kids and making surgeries safer for them, especially adenotonsillectomy. And it's not just about the research—it's about changing how we care for these children right here in Western Australia. So, it's been a pretty big deal”.