Learnings brought by the COVID-19 pandemic help to reduce mortality rate
April 4th will mark two years since Pequeno Príncipe Hospital confirmed the first positive case of COVID-19. Until March 10, 2022, in 23 months of pandemic, there were 2,800 confirmed cases, 500 hospitalizations, 126 patients who needed ICU and 16 deaths.
According to the assistant technical director of the Pequeno Príncipe, Victor Horácio de Souza Costa Junior, who is the person in charge of the care of patients with COVID-19, this pandemic brought many important learnings related to patient’s care and we can see the reflections of it in our daily performance data. “As seen in the rest of the world, we learnt a lot about this disease and these learnings are reflecting in our performance, with better practices and better results,” highlights.
This is the subject of the main article of the Pequeno Príncipe News’ second edition in 2022. Another news is about the Computerized Gait Laboratory and the Virtual Reality Rehabilitation Room of the Pequeno Príncipe, which have their kick-off last February. Installed at the Rehabilitation and Coliving Center of Pequeno Príncipe (Appam Program), the new services broaden the possibilities of diagnosis bringing more opportunities of even more accurate treatments to the patients with mobility problems. “The computerized gait assessments identify walking disorders that cannot be detected by the physical exams and visual analysis. The method helps the team in the decision making for treatments and follow up of patients with gait problems,” points out the Head of the Orthopedics Service of the Hospital, Luiz Antonio Munhoz da Cunha.
The third article of the Pequeno Príncipe News is about an equipment enabled by the funds raised at the Pequeno Príncipe Gala supports and that is used in research and healthcare activities. The high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) allows researchers from the Pelé Pequeno Príncipe Research Institute to monitor the level of drugs in patients’ blood, thus helping the team to monitor important drugs used in the treatments. “We perform weekly analysis of the blood samples from children and adolescents using voriconazole and monthly analysis of the ones using mitotane. During the year 2021 we accomplished about a hundred analysis which benefited 43 patients,” says the researcher Lauro M. de Souza, PhD, who conducts the works in this area in the Chromatography Laboratory.