Royo Villanova opens a new stroke unit with capacity for four seriously ill patients

Since this week, the Royo Villanova Hospital has a new stroke unit, with capacity for four seriously ill patients who require more exhaustive control, which will serve the entire Zaragoza I sector and which, according to forecasts, could serve approximately 490 patients per year.

The Minister of Health, Sira Repollés, visited this resource this Friday, accompanied by the manager of the Aragonese Health Service, José María Arnal; the manager of the Zaragoza I sector, Javier Marión; and those responsible for the hospital center. 

Repollés has highlighted that This space "completes the stroke units available in Aragonese hospitals"Until now, in this hospital there was a double room with monitoring from the Nursing control. Thanks to the expansion carried out, the center has a specific area with capacity for four beds in the same room with an independent Nursing control 24 hours a day and built-in telemetry. The new unit is located on the fourth floor of the hospital and It is equipped with a monitoring center with four monitors, one per patient, and two workstations for consulting electronic medical records and writing reports by staff. In addition, all of the unit's facilities have been adapted for its new use, redistributing lighting and maintaining a patient-nurse call system for direct contact between the unit's control and the general control of the plant. The total amount of the action, including the equipment, has amounted to almost 27.000 euros.

Dr. José María Pérez Trullén, head of the Neurology service at Royo Villanova, has thanked the opening of this "long-awaited" unit, which meets the objective of the sector having a resource that offers "early and effective care to this type of patients", thus reducing "complications and sequelae and improving their quality of life." "They are patients," he states, "who in a significant percentage may have disabilities and the objective is to reduce that disability." In this sense, she added: "We hope that once this area is inaugurated, the quality of life of these patients in the sector will greatly improve," with permanent monitoring 24 hours a day and earlier care. Pérez Trullén recalled that "Sector Zaragoza I cares for 200.000 patients and two beds were logically an insufficient resource. We hope to be more autonomous in caring for stroke patients." "There are about 465 patients a year who come through the door with strokes and we must also consider that the Provincial, which depends on us, receives about 20." In total there would be about 490 stroke patients per year in the health sector. 

Of the 490 strokes annually, not all require admission nor do all those admitted need to do so in this unit. JanThis specific unit at Royo Villanova serves those who have suffered a serious stroke and need more exhaustive control., avoiding in most cases admission to the ICU as it is an intermediate semi-critical unit, where patients spend the first 24-48 hours after suffering the stroke.