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We give nutritional and diet support to hospitalised patients across all clinical departments at the Hospital, and carry out follow-up monitoring at outpatient care for those patients who need it. We also provide outpatient care for patients referred from other healthcare areas of the Hospital and primary care centres that require specialist nutritional and dietary support. Patients requiring nutritional support are treated at the Horta Primary Care Centre. We actively collaborate in educational programmes to detect nutritional problems and for home monitoring of enteral nutrition, that is, feeding via a tube.
As a transversal unit, we support the General, Maternity and Children’s and Traumatology, Rehabilitation and Burns Hospitals, as well as the Primary Care Office in Sant Andreu; we also collaborate with a range of different medical and surgical specialties. We also participate in and direct a number of joint protocols with various other areas of the Hospital, and we maintain a very close working relationship with the Pharmacy Department, both in developing artificial nutrition and in selecting nutritional products. We act together with the Biochemistry Department in monitoring the nutrition of patients and in pursuing lines of research. We also provide support for the Pere Virgili Health Park.
We work to educate patients and family members, as well as providing courses for our staff through our continuing education programme, and we collaborate on continuing education in primary care. We organise training courses for primary care nursing staff, nursing staff from the Hospital and our orderly staff. We also educate patients and relatives about managing enteral nutrition, parenteral nutrition, as well as nutrition in cases of nephrology and inflammatory bowel disease.
During a hospital stay, the nutrition support we provide might cover:
Once a patient has been discharged, we continue to monitor nutritional treatment through:
In short, we prepare diets for hospital patients, always taking into account menu alternatives, menus for treatment and diet changes depending on patient cycles. We work together with the Catering Unit to organise and prepare the hospital’s catering operation.
Finally, we also take care of preparing and distributing baby bottles, baby food and special liquid meals for healthcare units, as well as collecting and cleaning utensils.
Our teaching work includes:
The Endocrinology and Nutrition Department provides care for patients with endocrine gland diseases, which secrete hormones into the blood flow, as well as metabolism and all aspects relating to nutritional status at all stages of life. Thanks to translational research, carried out on our hospital campus, we can apply basic research to prevention and treatment, thus optimising patient care in terms of prevention, diagnosis and treatment.
In our Department, we treat diseases such as diabetes, morbid or grave obesity and disorders derived from the thyroid gland and the pituitary gland.
We have a Day Hospital where we attend to patients with chronic illnesses that until now required hospital admission, but for which patients can now be treated as outpatients. This is the case, for example, of diabetic patients with acute decompensations. We also have a unit specialising in Diabetic Foot.
The Day Hospital offers primary care, improving coordination between the hospital and primary care centres. Every month, we attend to about 300 patients, most of whom are diabetic patients with uncomplicated acute illnesses. We carry out about 20 tests every month, and we also carry out telephone monitoring of patients when we have to monitor certain types of treatments.
The Day Hospital also performs functional tests to determine the patient's condition. One example is the implantation of insulin perfusion pumps, a device the size of a mobile phone that administers insulin 24 hours a day through a cannula that is implanted under the skin of the patient with type 1 diabetes. We also use devices to constantly monitor glucose levels. The devices are minimally invasive and designed to measure glucose levels and provide information on any fluctuations.
At the Endocrinology and Nutrition Department and the Nutrition Support Unit, we regularly organise information courses aimed at diabetics and their families, with the aim of improving their quality of life. These courses cover how to control diabetes, avoid decompensations and prevent chronic complications.
At the Diabetic Foot Unit, we treat the range of syndromes that affect the feet of patients with diabetes. The possible complications of type 2 diabetes mellitus, which affects 6.5% of the population between 30 and 65 years old, according to data from the Department of Health, include neuropathy, where the nerves of the feet are affected, ischemia, which causes a progressive decrease in blood flow to the foot, and infection. These complications cause tissue damage to the skin, or foot ulcers, causing significant morbidity and sometimes leading to amputation.
We have a multidisciplinary team that was set up to ensure early detection of any complications due to the disease and thus avoid the need for amputations. This involves the following departments: Traumatology and Orthopaedic Surgery, Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Infectious Diseases, and Angiology and Vascular and Endovascular Surgery.
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