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.
The Traumatic Frail Patient Area at Vall d’Hebron University Hospital is dedicated to comprehensive care for patients with hip, vertebral, ankle, and other fractures. The interdisciplinary team includes trauma surgery, internal medicine, anesthesia, rehabilitation, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, nutrition, social work, bedside nursing, and advanced practice nursing, aiming to restore patient autonomy safely and efficiently. The area provides care from emergency admission through hospital discharge, ensuring optimal coordination and personalized follow-up.
Working within areas of expertise allows for standardized protocols and the identification of key roles for each professional, improving efficiency, quality of care, and patient safety. Notable initiatives include the implementation of clinical ultrasound to assess bladder volume and determine the need for catheterization, avoiding unnecessary procedures and reducing the risk of urinary infections. This initiative, actively led by nursing staff, strengthens professional empowerment and consolidates the use of ultrasound as a key tool in hospital care, while optimizing patient recovery and reintegration into their environment.
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Healthcare Social Work
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Internal Medicine
Orthopaedic Surgery and Traumatology
The Infection, Tumors, and Reconstruction Area of Vall d’Hebron University Hospital, located on the second floor of the Traumatology Hospital, is a national reference center within the CSUR Program for the treatment of complex osteoarticular infections, such as prosthetic infections, osteomyelitis, or massive bone reconstructions. Managing these cases requires close collaboration among specialists in infectious diseases, microbiology, reconstructive plastic surgery, pharmacy, and nursing, who work together within the Osteoarticular Infections Committee.
Organizing care by knowledge areas has allowed the consolidation of an expert team in complex care, improved multidisciplinary communication, and ensured comprehensive and continuous care. Initiatives such as discharge recommendation sheets, a direct patient follow-up line, training sessions, and postoperative care protocols have been implemented. With this approach, the area combines research, innovation, and humanization to provide high-quality care focused on patient safety, comfort, and well-being.
Infectious Diseases
Immunological diseases are disorders in which the immune system does not function properly, either due to overactivity or deficiency. This imbalance can cause inappropriate responses to external agents or damage the body’s own tissues.
Immune System Diseases
There are immune system disorders caused by:
a) Loss of function: Primary immunodeficiencies, acquired immunodeficiencies.
b) Excess of function: Autoimmune diseases, in which the body, through an excessive exercise of its defenses, attacks itself due to the loss of a fundamental function: self-tolerance. This means that under normal conditions, a body’s own cell will never attack another of its own cells.
In the first case, immunodeficiencies are indicated by the repeated occurrence of infections, which is the key sign for detection. These can appear early in life due to a genetic alteration, in adulthood as a result of treatments for other diseases such as cancer, or can be acquired through viral infections, with HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) being one of the most significant.
In the second case, autoimmune diseases are suggested by the appearance of inflammation without apparent cause in joints, lungs, kidneys, liver, or other organs.
Symptoms primarily depend on whether they are due to a loss of function (recurrent infections) or an excess of function (inflammatory disease affecting one or more organs).
Immune diseases can affect anyone throughout their life. In general, immunodeficiencies are more common in early childhood, while autoimmune diseases usually affect young adults, more frequently women.
The body’s defense capacity is assessed in two ways:
Basal state: in the patient’s ordinary condition.
After stimulation: the immune cells are stimulated in the laboratory to evaluate their function.
For autoimmune diseases, factors present in the blood are analyzed; elevated levels may indicate abnormal activity against the body itself.
Diagnostic evaluations include:a) Study of innate immunityb) Study of acquired immunityc) Study of the functional capacity of the immune systemd) Study of factors characterizing autoimmune disease
Assessing immune competence can be done in several ways:
Detection and counting of immune cells, specifically lymphocytes.
Laboratory stimulation of lymphocytes to test their functionality.
Analysis of blood or biopsy samples for factors causing self-attack, such as autoantibodies (defense proteins with abnormal self-aggressive function).
Study of elevated cellular messengers indicating the activity of these cells against the body.
Immunodeficiency: restoration of the immune system’s functional capacity.
Autoimmunity: modulation or inhibition of the immune system’s self-aggressive capacity.
Laboratory tests to assess immune system functionality are standard. Genetic tests are also used to assist in diagnosis.
In addition to general recommendations for a healthy diet, regular exercise, and abstaining from smoking, adherence to the childhood vaccination schedule is essential. Vaccinations not only protect against specific infections but also help improve overall immune defense.
The Traumatology, Rehabilitation and Burns Hospital responds to all pathologies in the musculoskeletal system and processes that lead to disability, especially highly complex processes, such as spinal cord injury and severe burns.
How to get there
The aim of the Hospital of Traumatology, Rehabilitation and Burns is to achieve the highest level of independence, functional capacity and quality of life for patients. To achieve this, the medical centre offers specialised surgical and rehabilitation care. In addition, our medical team is made up of specialists in orthopaedic surgery, plastic surgery, rehabilitation, neurosurgery, anaesthesiology and intensive medicine, as well as nursing teams and healthcare technicians specialised in caring for these patients.
Complex processes such as spinal cord injuries, multiple traumas, craniocephalic trauma and spina bifida are treated with a comprehensive, multidisciplinary approach. The work carried out in this field of knowledge puts the hospital at the top of spinal cord injury and trauma in Catalonia.
The Vall d’Hebron Burns Unit has extensive experience in treating severe burns. It also supports the care of burns patients in other centres. The telemedicine project particularly stands out in this area, assessing and monitoring burns patients remotely. The Unit’s daily work in the care and treatment of severe burns patients has made it a leading CSUR (Centres, Services and Units of Reference) in Spain and Andorra.
The Trauma Center is a pioneering facility that provides immediate care to severe and emergency polytrauma patients. Covering 814 m² on floor -1 of the Traumatology, Rehabilitation and Burns Hospital, the centre is fully equipped to treat all degrees of polytrauma. Its facilities include a polytrauma room to stabilise patients, with the capacity to simultaneously treat two severe cases, and an adjacent CT scanner, available 24 hours a day, to help rapidly establish the appropriate treatment strategy. It also has two operating theatres, one of which is hybrid and fitted with angiography technology to perform embolisations and control post-traumatic haemorrhages without the need for intra-hospital transfers. This care model puts the patients at its centre, while professionals from various specialities move around them to offer efficient, coordinated care.
The creation of the Trauma Center completes a process started in 2021, with the installation of a heliport on the roof of the Traumatology, Rehabilitation and Burns Hospital. The heliport is just two minutes from the Emergency Department, significantly reducing patient transfer times and thus improving their prognosis. Providing care to an average of 300 severe emergency polytrauma patients a year, Vall d’Hebron has become a leading centre in the approach to these pathologies, offering a rapid, specialised response that minimises avoidable mortality and associated sequelae.
Spina bifida is a congenital neural tube defect that affects the spinal cord and vertebral column. It occurs when these structures do not close properly during fetal development and may cause motor, sensory, or functional impairments.
The term neural tube defects (NTDs) or spina bifida refers to a diverse group of congenital malformations of the central nervous system that primarily affect the spinal cord and vertebral column.
In the most severe cases, such as myelomeningocele and meningocele, there is a failure of the vertebral column to close, allowing the spinal cord to protrude externally (open defects). Milder forms, such as lipomas or lipomyelomeningocele, present as a soft mass covered by skin, a hairy lumbar patch, or may go unnoticed (closed defects). The most severe defects can be associated with other brain malformations, such as Chiari II malformation.
The cause of neural tube defects (NTDs) is unknown, but current evidence suggests that genetic predisposition combines with external factors. Some of these factors are recognized (such as valproic acid or methotrexate), but in most cases, they are related to a deficiency or interference in folic acid metabolism.
Administration of folic acid to women before conception has reduced the incidence of the malformation.
Prenatal diagnosis is usually performed via ultrasound. Since 2011, our hospital has applied an ultrasound-based technique, developed by rehabilitation doctors and obstetricians, that allows prenatal determination of the type and motor level of the fetus with spina bifida. This enables an individualized and reliable prognosis of the child’s motor and functional abilities.
Patients with myelomeningocele:
Patients with lipomas or lipomyelomeningocele:
The treatment of choice for open defects is prenatal surgical closure between 24–26 weeks of gestation, aiming to minimize sequelae from the malformation.
From birth, a child with spina bifida must be monitored in a specialized unit that guarantees their lifelong care and therapeutic needs. The multidisciplinary team should include obstetricians, pediatricians, neurosurgeons, urologists, orthopedic surgeons, pediatric surgeons, rehabilitation doctors, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, nurses, and orthotic technicians.
Treatment must be individualized, as different types of neural tube defects lead to different sequelae.
Basic objectives of NTD treatment:
The Spina Bifida Unit at our hospital has existed since the 1970s. It is the only unit in the area that can provide continuous care from birth throughout life, with the same team of professionals.
The rehabilitation doctor coordinates the unit, integrating the various therapeutic proposals to ensure they are realistic and achievable. This approach prevents unfeasible recommendations that could cause disappointment for families and suffering for the patient.
Treatment with the drug levodopa allows many of the functions deteriorated or lost due to the disease to be restored. It is the most effective treatment, but it also has limitations: as the disease progresses, its effect becomes transient and fluctuates. When the medication is working, the patient feels well, in the "On" state. When the effect wears off, the patient enters the "Off" state, and symptoms reappear.
To improve the effects of levodopa, different routes of administration have been investigated (inhaled, transdermal, intrajejunal) and various pharmaceutical formulations have been developed. Administration via gastrostomy with a levodopa gel infusion has been particularly successful.
There are also other pharmacological and neurosurgical treatments, such as electrical stimulation of specific brain areas, which provide good results. Research is ongoing to target the diseased brain using stereotactic ultrasound, avoiding trepanation and traditional surgery.
New avenues of research have opened in Parkinson’s disease to determine its causes, prevent its progression, and maximize symptom management.
Low-intensity physical exercise, practiced regularly and consistently—such as simply walking for half an hour to an hour each day—helps preserve automatic and semi-automatic motor functions.
Walking involves two aspects of movement: voluntary and automatic. The voluntary movement would be the act of taking steps, while others—such as arm swinging, foot placement when stepping, head and neck position, etc.—have an important involuntary component.
All body movements benefit from exercise. The motor abilities we all have, which seem easy and permanent, are not necessarily so. Certain movements—like touching the floor with your fingers while keeping your legs straight—can be lost over time if not practiced.
We need constant maintenance, perhaps of low intensity, but sustained over time, to enjoy the full potential of our bodies throughout life.
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