Every participant counts
With your help we hope to advance our understanding of heart disease and improve management of future patients. When you agreed to participate in our study you joined a cohort of up to 800 patients who will be taking part in the OxAMI research programme at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford. Your participation is important to us as researchers because we are aiming to get a clearer idea of what happens during a heart attack. Please be assured that at all times your safety is the number one priority and your standard treatment is in no way compromised by being included in any part of this study.
Your participation is voluntary
Your participation is completely voluntary and you can withdraw at any time. This will not affect the standard of medical care you receive. If you decide to withdraw you can let us know by contacting the OxAMI team. If you continue taking part we want to monitor your recovery from the heart attack by carrying out some additional investigations. Please see our follow-up schedule on the About OxAMI page.
We keep your data confidential
Importantly, we can assure you that your participation will be kept strictly confidential. The OxAMI study complies with ethical guidelines of the Data Protection Act which requires data to be anonymised as soon as it is practical to do so. Your information will be handled in confidence. No personal data will be made public and will be held in a secure database. Find out more in our Patient Information Sheet.
What happens next?
We invite all OxAMI participants to attend an outpatient follow-up appointment, usually after 6 months following the initial angioplasty procedure (in some instances patients might also be invited to attend an appointment after 1 or 6 weeks post-procedure). The appointment involves giving a blood sample and having a cardiac MRI scan. During this appointment we also ask participants to fill in a simple Quality of Life questionnaire. We may send these questionnaires via the post, if a hospital visit is not possible.
Thereafter you will be contacted by telephone yearly for the following 10 years. This gives the researchers the opportunity to monitor your recovery and progress after the initial angioplasty treatment. We may also follow your progress by using national health registries, existing cardiovascular databases or by contacting your GP, if appropriate.
Please keep in touch
It is important for us to keep your contact details updated, in order for us to be able to monitor your progress and complete our study assessments. We would be grateful if you could let us know of any changes to your telephone number or home address or GP address. See how to Contact Us.
To find out more, read the OxAMI Patient Information Sheet.