Sant Joan’s Hospital

A hospital in Alicante, Spain, has received a donation from a British patient amounting to the sum of 191,892.92€, who had been hospitalized during a summer trip in Benidorm and was glad because of the good treatment that the doctors gave him.

Thanks to an English gentleman’s donation, Sant Joan’s Hospital has been able to open a new metabolic therapy unit. To build this Metabolic Therapy Unit, 250.000 euros have been invested, of which 58.107,08 have been invested by the ‘’Conselleria de Sanitat’’ and the rest has been raised through the donation of the aforementioned man.

The new section is part of the Nuclear Medicine Service offered by Sant Joan’s Hospital. This recently opened service is a referent for the rest of the province of Alicante because from now, patients can be hospitalized and be treated in special separated (isolated) rooms without posing a risk of radiation for the rest of people. This service can be offered for many other communities, not only for the province of Alicante.

Because this therapy requires highs doses of radiopharmaceuticals, the walls of the rooms are made of leaded bricks which protect outside from nuclear radiation. In addition, part of the radiation that patients receive in the treatment is excreted in urine so, it cannot go to into the main drainage system, and it must to be channeled into special tanks to be stored. Specifically, these two tanks are connected to the patient’s bath room.

Regarding the nurses station, it has a surveillance monitor from which the nurses can view at the same time all the rooms and it also has a communicator which makes them able to contact their patients. As well, the unit needs nurses working continuously for 24 hours a day and the communicator advises them if an incident occurs.

The unit also features a gammateca, where radiopharmaceuticals are stored to be located and controlled, and a small area for the control of residues from the proceeds of patients.

Now maybe you are asking yourself… What exactly is metabolic therapy? ლ(ಠ_ಠლ)

Metabolic therapy is the treatment of some diseases, using radiopharmaceuticals or radioactive isotopes used in Nuclear Medicine. The most common diseases that are treated in this service are thyroid cancer, hyperthyroidism, neuroblastoma in children (which is the second most common tumor in children, although with a low prevalence of one case per 7,000 children)

The treatments are carried out in relation to the doses of radiopharmaceutical administered to the patient, therefore some cases are carried out on ambulatories and others that require nuclear medicaments are treated in a special unit, such as the one just installed. After the treatment, patients have to pass three days in observation to reduce their nuclear levels of radiation (in their system) before they leave the unit.

And last but not least, the activities in this unit can start only with the relevant permission of the Nuclear Safety Council (CSN), which were previously requested by the Radiation Protection Service of the Hospital de Sant Joan.

– by Nerea and Isabel

A video in Spanish about the new section at Sant Joan’s Hospital