Vall d’Hebron is the first hospital in Spain to have a multidisciplinary team specialized in acute spinal cord injuries, with the capacity to perform surgeries every day of the year 24 hours a day. A third of these injuries occur at weekends and proceeding with the intervention in the first 24 hours increases the options for improving the injured.
The teams have been organized to cover public holidays and weekends between seven surgeons from the multidisciplinary spine unit, ten anesthesiologists, three neurophysiologists, six shifts of two nurses, a nursing technician and caretakers. Since the device was launched, the team has operated on an average of one patient per weekend.
The Vall d’Hebron hospital, classified as a center of high complexity in the care of urgent polytrauma patients, intervenes in 90 acute spinal cord injuries per year. For every woman injured there is an average of 3.6 men. Half of the cases are the result of traffic accidents and risky sporting practices, such as diving or mountain accidents, and the other half correspond to falls of elderly people, which usually cause less complete neck injuries.
Ferran Pellisé, head of the multidisciplinary spine surgery unit, highlighted the fact that Vall d’Hebron is a pioneer in taking on the responsibility of being permanently available to operate on acutely injured patients. “It is very important to implement this team, which provides service to the whole country in a centralized way, which improves healthcare treatment and the quality of patient care”, said the health minister, Manel Balcells, during a visit to the facilities.
Since 2016, people who have a traumatic spinal cord injury in Catalonia and Andorra have been treated by the emergency services and transferred to Vall d’Hebron. The first attention is vital for the diagnosis of these injuries.
The spinal cord, which communicates the brain with the rest of the body through nerve impulses, is made up of 33 vertebrae, from the skull to the lumbar region, divided into four sections: cervical, thoracic, lumbar and sacral.
Spine surgery involves a dozen professionals and aims to reduce pressure on the spinal cord and stabilize the spine to prevent damage. “The positioning and mobilization of the patient must be very controlled so as not to worsen the injury. It’s not the same to move a patient with a cervical injury (half of the cases) than with a dorsolumbar injury (the other half),” says nurse Eladia Tauste.
Once the spine has been stabilized, rehabilitation treatment can begin in the ICU itself, with the aim of preventing complications and achieving maximum patient autonomy. Each injured person is admitted to Vall d’Hebron for an average of 45 days, always under the care of specialized professionals.
