(MENAFN- The Peninsula) The Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Department at Rumailah Hospital, a member of Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC), is offering a wide range of innovative rehabilitation and reintegration services to its patients, especially those requiring long-term care.
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One service is intrathecal baclofen (ITB) therapy to manage severe spasticity, introduced as an inpatient service under the pain management programme in 2010 by the department's Senior Consultant and Acting Chairperson, Dr Wafa Al Yazeedi (pictured).
"Spasticity is an abnormal increase in muscle tone caused by damage to the upper motor neuron pathways regulating muscles or injury or disease of the central nervous system.
"Spasticity may be a result of multiple sclerosis, cerebral palsy, stroke, brain injury, or spinal cord injury," she said.
Dr Al Yazeedi said severe spasticity can have a distressing effect on a patient's function, comfort and care-giving effort.
"Spasticity may result in musculoskeletal complications, loss of coordination, loss of function, pain and permanent muscle shortening or contracture.
"Under the pain management programme, we offer clinics in three stages of care - acute, chronic and palliative.
"The mantle of providing the chronic care service falls within the department and one of the important services we offer is ITB refilling and reprogramming," she said.
Dr Al Yazeedi said the department started refilling and reprogramming of the baclofen pump in 2010 after she returned from Sweden and Switzerland having completed a course and training in the specialist area.
"ITB therapy uses an implantable infusion system to deliver precise amounts of baclofen injection directly to the intrathecal space via a surgically implanted infusion pump and catheter in a patient with severe spasticity," she said.
She said the pump can stay under the patient's skin and be refilled with baclofen injection for up to seven years.
Apart from helping implant and replace ITB pumps in patients with spasticity, the department frequently helps patients, some of whom got their pumps implanted abroad, to refill and reprogramme their device to change the solution and check their dosage.
"A 40-millilitre pump can last between three to six months before the next refill depending on the dosage," Dr Al Yazeedi said. "Implant of a pump and catheter is a relatively straightforward surgical procedure. The continuous-infusion pump and spinal catheter systems are usually inserted under general anaesthesia with the patient in the lateral (sideward) position after receiving appropriate perioperative antibiotic drugs," she added.
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