We are the combination of four hospitals: the General Hospital, the Children’s Hospital, the Women’s Hospital and the Traumatology, Rehabilitation and Burns Hospital. We are part of the Vall d’Hebron Barcelona Hospital Campus: a world-leading health park where healthcare plays a crucial role.
Patients are the centre and the core of our system. We are professionals committed to quality care and our organizational structure breaks down the traditional boundaries between departments and professional groups, with an exclusive model of knowledge areas.
Would you like to know what your stay at Vall d'Hebron will be like? Here you will find all the information.
The commitment of Vall d'Hebron University Hospital to innovation allows us to be at the forefront of medicine, providing first class care adapted to the changing needs of each patient.
At the Prenatal Diagnosis Unit (UPD) we detect the existence of congenital defects, disorders or malformations that the foetus may show as it develops, as early as possible. Depending on each case, and always on an individual basis, we advise families during the various stages of the pregnancy and help them to make decisions.
Up to 3% of newborns may have some kind of congenital anomaly or defect. These disorders may be structural or functional, familiar or sporadic, hereditary or not, and may occur in low risk as well as high risk pregnancies for various reasons:
The Obstetrics Ultrasound Unit carries out all the necessary ultrasound scans on women and their future babies during pregnancy. Scans are most typically taken once per trimester during pregnancy, although there is no established number, as they are taken whenever they are considered necessary by the gynaecology professional.
The following ultrasound explorations are carried out during pregnancy:
First-trimester ultrasound: this is carried out between the first 11 and 13 weeks. This ultrasound, together with the previous blood analysis, is used for determining whether there is a risk of aneuploidy or early preeclampsia.
Aneuploidy is a complication that can cause birth defects in the foetus owing to an abnormal number of chromosomes in the blood. And early preeclampsia is a disease which, among other complications, can lead to premature births caused by high blood pressure.
Neonatal Surgery is the sub-discipline within paediatric surgery that deals with surgically treating congenital and acquired illnesses in newborns and infants up to one month old.
This is a highly complex sub-speciality that only exists at tertiary paediatric centres. The past few decades have brought about important advances, thanks to improvements in diagnostic techniques, neonatal intensive care and anaesthetics, and surgical techniques and materials. These have radically changed the prognosis for both birth defects and acquired surgical pathologies in newborns.
Neonatal surgery requires detailed knowledge of complex pathologies in patients who also have special conditions that are different from other paediatric patients. The Neonatal and Foetal Surgery Unit covers practically every surgical neonatal pathology, and it is a reference centre both nationally and on a European level. It is part of ERNICA, the European Reference Network (ERN) for Rare Inherited and Congenital Digestive Disorders. In recent years, the Unit has been firmly committed to introducing minimally invasive surgical techniques, achieving excellent results.
Chagas disease is an infection caused by the “Trypanosoma cruzi” parasite which is transmitted through the bites of an insect (the “kissing bug”). The disease can also be spread from mother to child (vertical transmission), through blood transfusion, organ donation from people infected with the disease or from eating food contaminated with the parasite. For the moment, the number of new cases has been reduced thanks to policies to eliminate the insect in countries where it is endemic, as well as thanks to screening programmes aimed at blood and organ donors and pregnant women. The future challenges to cure this disease are maintaining and increasing these measures in addition to developing new treatment evolution and response markers for patients in the chronic phase, and new drugs to treat the disease.
Chagas disease is endemic to Latin America and is a global health challenge due to migration from countries in the region. Transmission via insect is mainly found in Bolivia, which has the highest number of cases. There are also infections in north-west Argentina, Peru, Paraguay, Ecuador, Nicaragua and southern Mexico. Outside these areas it is more commonly transmitted from mother to child.
Most patients with Chagas disease do not show any symptoms, which makes it difficult to detect. The disease develops in two phases:
This disease affects six to seven million people, but 60 million are estimated to be at risk of infection. There are 11,000 cases in Catalonia.
There are currently two drugs that are used to treat Chagas disease: Benznidazole and Nifurtimox. Specific treatment is needed to address any cardiac and/or gastrointestinal complications that may arise.
Since 2011, Catalonia has implemented the “Protocol for screening and diagnosing Chagas disease in pregnant Latin American women and their babies”. This programme allows possible congenital cases to be detected, and at the same time actively screens blood and organ donations from donors.
Obstetrics, Children's Hospital and Woman's Hospital
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