Purchase of Medical Equipment for the Paediatric Hospital Bambino Gesù (Rome And S. Marinella Centers), Italy

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Project location: Italy, Rome And S. Marinella
Project start date: April 2009 - Project end date: December 2009
Project number: 2009-03
Beneficiary: Ospedale Pediatrico Bambino Gesù - Fondazione Bambino Gesù Onlus

The project consisted in the purchase of medical equipment for two different medical units:

Dialysis

- Continuous Dialysis CRRT Device (Continuous Renal Replacement Therapy). Each year about 2,000 dialysis sessions are performed and 10-15 children undergo peritoneal treatment, most of whom come from other regions. The CRRT is a recent innovation for continuous extracorporeal dialysis in Intensive Care.

- Dialysis is a procedure used to purify the blood from waste produced by the body when the kidneys are no longer able to do so.

- The diseases that lead to impairment of renal function may be reversible or irreversible. In the first case we speak about Acute Renal Failure in the second of Chronic Renal Failure. In both cases, when the kidneys are no longer able to cleanse the body from waste produced daily by the body metabolism and lose the ability to eliminate the liquids normally introduced, it is necessary to resort to means which allow a purification similar to those that make the kidneys. This "replacement" of renal function is called dialysis.

- The device allows the hospital to work on those critics children who, for their conditions, need a 'soft' extracorporeal purification. It allows to balance the fluids and toxic substances of the child 24/24 hours a day, often allowing them to survive. It is, therefore, an essential "life support" and its use is on the rise in the hospital, which has become a national and international reference point for this type of therapy. The number of children treated is increasing. Since 2000, this number has gradually increased from 3-5 per year to more than 30 in 2012. The device can operate 24 hours a day for weeks.

- The Hospital bought CRRT in 2009. The device was then irreparably damaged, along with other equipment, after a fire broke out in December 2010. The machine is now in use with a loan contract.

Neonatal intensive care

- Neonatal non-invasive ventilation device.

- Neonatal Intensive Care Unit - the hospital assists children under the age of 30 days in need of particularly complex and advanced assistance:

• preterm and / or low birth weight, especially if <32 weeks. gestational age or <1500 g birth weight;

• at-risk infants (both term and preterm, with problems of adaptation to extrauterine life because of a pregnancy, a labor or a difficult birth);

• infants with birth defects, or metabolic diseases and kidney.

- The non-invasive ventilation is a system now widely used in neonatal care in order to limit the use of tracheal intubation in infants who have these insufficiencies. With this technique, ventilation is achieved by applying a constant pressure to nasal routes throughout the respiratory cycle.

- The equipment donated by the Nando Peretti Foundation is regularly used and has allowed the treatment of one patient per month affected by chronic severe respiratory requiring noninvasive mechanical ventilation. In particular, the application of the Fan Giulia has been most useful for the preterm infants in non-invasive ventilation with nasocannule, for which it has been possible to avoid the oro-tracheal intubation and for the patients carrying a tracheotomy (myopathies, malformative diseases, neurological diseases) for which the garrison in question proved to be very suitable. The results obtained have been characterized by a better tolerability of ventilatory support, a softer care of the newborn with the relationship mother-child more comfortable and consequently an approach to faster discharge .

- Both the equipment devices are therefore regularly used at the hospital. Their acquisition allowed to ensure a greater number of interventions and to ensure highly specialized care to all those families who come to the hospital for the treatment of their children's diseases.