The British Hospital optimizes its Intensive Care Unit

With the incorporation of new technological equipment, the British Hospital will optimize the benefits of its latest technology Intensive Care Unit (ICU) to the latest generation in the coming weeks. The celebration of its 160th anniversary is a good opportunity to visit the British Hospital and update its different areas, achievements and goals. The British Hospital Intensive Care Unit, that was inaugurated two years ago when the hospital second floor extension, was created, designed and built according to the specific needs of the service provided, in order to facilitate the work of the medical and professional staff for the care of critical patients. The ICU has twelve critical care rooms as well as four intermediate care rooms, and guarantees excellence regarding patients´ care, because it was created according to its purpose, to its latest generation equipment and to the professional team that provides. All rooms were equipped and furnished with the best technology in beds and technical bands, in addition to its warm and comfortable design in order to guarantee the patient and the family the best attention, both from the point of view of the assistance and the experience itself. The rooms are provided with the last generation technology equipment, some of them smart, such as monitors, pumps, breathing devices and dialysis machines. The area has the best in terms of isolation and double circulation around rooms, for the access of the patients' families. After the transition process and adaptation to the new infrastructure, in next few weeks, the British Hospital will incorporate new equipment to optimize the area's benefits, mentioned Dr. Eduardo Amigo, Head of the UCI. A last generation technology ultrasound scanner will lead to advances in the work with fast images, without replacing the professional ultrasound but allowing the implementation of "fast imaging techniques, since for the intensive  medicine it is more and more useful the ultrasound for the confirmation or the discard a lot of things." This technology will also allow "vascular access guided by images", as it is a “very practical team in its software and which facilitates the acquisition of new possibilities for a series of procedures," he explained. The necessary equipment will be added to this for a "high flow oxygen", which has its origins in the pediatric medicine and allows to leave aside more invasive ventilation techniques in the field of respiratory care. At the same time, “the ICU monitoring system benefits will be optimizing", through the incorporation of a monitoring system of the electroencephalogram bispectral activity, which allows "to quantify the degree of the patient sedation". Dr. Amigo mentioned that “it is important not only to avoid low dose sedation but also over-sedation. It allows an acute sedation, which it can be translated into a decrease of the days in which patients are sedated and with respirator, among other beneficial utilities for the patient. The head of the ICU explained that in the coming weeks medical and professional staff in the area will receive training for the proper management of the new equipment. Dr. Amigo highlighted the low rates of hospital infections, which is explained by the "very good relationship of nursing staff with the patients. The quantity and quality of nursing staff will allow us to quickly adopt the new technology," he predicted.