The Attention Clinic for the sequels of adult Static Encephalic Lesions, is CIREN’s unit for the assistance, teaching process and investigation for the study and treatment of sequels provoked by CNS lesions. It has as principal objective, the introduction and development of new therapeutic methods that allow our neurologists, a much more rational approach to these issues. This Clinic also performs investigations related to these topics.
The Clinic is composed of a teamwork on such specialties as: Neurology, Internal Medicine, Neuro-psychology, motor rehabilitation, defectology, phoniatry, registered nurses and nursing technicians. Besides, the Clinic has the collaboration of other specialties like: Physiotherapy, Neuro-psychiatry, Neuro-surgery and Neuro-physiology. Specialized nursing service is offered 24 hours a day.
The present infrastructure includes 29 rooms (26 double and 3 single), distributed in adequately conditioned houses for hospital services, located at CIREN’s Neurovilla. That permits the institution to offer medical attention and an excellent stay. Our Clinic has a 10-year-work experience, or more, where more than 800 patients have received treatment due to sequels of the CNS static lesions. We have obtained improvements in the quality of life in more than 70% of cases, with low index of complications.
Brain vascular disease and encephalic skull traumatisms constitute the most frequent cause of the CNS static lesions. The most important attention requests our Clinic receives are; from secondary neurologic sequels to tumoral, infectious, toxic and metabolic diseases that receive attention at our Clinic.
Main sequale provoked by this disease involve the affectation of the motor system, that is, (paralysis, gait disorders, equilibrium alterations, coordination and involuntary movements); sensitiveness, cognitive orientation, memory, language, thought, calculation, etc., and conduct.
All these problems condition the severe limitations to perform daily activities, which provokes a diminishing in the patient’s quality of life.
By the end of the 80’s, the patient’s treatment suffering from brain lesions was based in the prevention of risk factors and the use of pharma with potentials to diminish lesion-devastating effects of the CNS during acute stages. In this way, very little value was given by neurologists to the spontaneous capacity for recovery, or induced by the CNS during the chronic stage as a sequel that conditions the patients’ quality of life. But these concepts have radically changed, as there is now multiple evidence that shows capacity for recovery of such sequels produced by static lesions of the CNS, with the use of pharmacology, psychiatry treatment and surgical techniques together with physical rehabilitation, that bring about a significant recovery of the patient’s quality of life.
It is known that his recovery capacity is based on the existence of the CNS’s functional mechanisms – as the rigid scheme of immutability has been progressively substituted by the concept of neuro-plasticity – which defines the nervous system as a dynamic one, a never-finished product, as the result of an always changing and changeable one from the interaction of genetic and environmental factors.
This organization changes are expressed in different levels and forms, as it permits our staff to assimilate new abilities or capacities to answer environmental necessities (learning process) or to modify pre-existing ones, when these capacities are lost or affected after lesion (functional recovery).
ATTENTION PROGRAM:
The assistant activity is organized in a hierarchical way and it is directed by a specialist in neurology, to whom are subordinated the rest of specialists. Initially, the Clinic’s specialists evaluate the patients for a 7-day period. Our staff’s objective is to define or corroborate clinical diagnoses and to characterize the existing sequels. Then according to evaluation results, a program for treatment is designed (Neurologic Restoration Program), that consists of 4-week cycle based on the rational application of teamwork therapeutic methods, applied in an extensive way according to the individual’s clinical profile. The treatment is based on physiology therapeutic methods, motor or cognitive learning techniques, specialized sports training, ozonotherapy, the use of neuro-modulators, neurotrophic and neuro-protector pharmas. The result of the treatment is evaluated and systematically controlled by the Clinic’s specialists and its duration depends on the patient’s individual clinical profile and his/her response to applied treatment.
Present scientific investigations are aimed at defining the efficacy of our therapeutic methods, prognosis factors for recovery in the different groups of patients and neuro-plastic mechanisms. These mechanisms condition recovery of sequels, with the use of modern tools for clinical and instrumental assessment (functional magnetic resonance, Spectroscopy and trans-cranial magnetic stimulation).