Department of Neurorehabilitation Sciences
The department is structured as Operative Units of Specialized Rehabilitation encompassing 148 beds affiliated with the Italian National Healthcare System. The beds are divided as follows:
• neurologic rehabilitation (110 inpatient beds and 12 outpatient beds)
• cardio-pulmonary rehabilitation (15 inpatient beds)
• orthopedic rehabilitation (11 inpatient beds)
The Specialized Rehabilitation
encompasses those activities of intensive rehabilitation undergone by inpatients to recover from significant disabilities. These disabilities, which often require a high level of commitment to address specialized diagnostic approach, and personalized medical rehabilitation and therapeutic interventions, necessitate multi-disciplinary and multi-professional treatments. They involve a high level of assistance from medical and nursing staff and the need to use technologically advanced equipment. Patients eligible for specialized rehabilitation are individuals with disabilities resulting from diseases for which there is a possible modification through rehabilitation. Patients require specific rehabilitation treatments that guarantee: grading, clinical monitoring, and a global care supported by the multi-professional team that, after performing functional assessments, define a personalized rehabilitation program enabling to offer a precise therapeutic-rehabilitative intervention.
Individual Rehabilitation Projects
The rehabilitation team, coordinated by the department chief, is comprised of physicians specialized in Physiatry, Neurology, Geriatrics, Infectious Diseases, Cardiology, Pulmonology, and Internal Medicine. In addition, Physiotherapists and Neuropsychologists play a key role in reviewing the patient’s clinical assessment.
The Individual Rehabilitation Projects are conducted according to a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approach, with particular emphasis on the integration of the various interventions. Starting with a correct diagnostic description and following with the identification of specific clinical needs, it constitutes the heart of the necessary rehabilitation. Thus, the definition of individual rehabilitation programs is geared toward the recovery of the residual abilities and the reintegration into society.
The individual rehabilitation program, located within the Individual Rehabilitation Project, defines the specific areas of intervention, including the short-term objectives, which staff members are involved, the appropriate timeline, the correct mode of conveying and verifying the interventions.
Inpatients
In line with the Regional Directive on the “Reform of the Network Rehabilitation” published in December 2004 and the Italian Ministerial Guidelines published in February 2011, the Unit welcomes mainly patients transferred directly from hospitals. Particularly from the Operative Units of Neurology, Neurosurgery, Intensive Care, Medicine and Orthopedics. General practitioners send a minority of patients in need of an intensive rehabilitation program for the following disorders:
• central nervous vascular lesions
• severe disabilities from spinal cord diseases
• neurodegenerative pathologies
• post neurosurgical interventions
• extrapyramidal diseases
• peripheral nerve lesions
• vegetative states
• traumatic injuries of the musculoskeletal system
• consequences of amputation and prosthesis implementation
• degenerative bone and joint disease with severe disabilities
• consequences of ischemic heart disease (bypass, angioplasty , myocardial infarction)
• consequences after valve replacement
• heart failure
Outpatients
The Day Hospital consists of cycles of planned hospitalizations, each lasting less than a day, delivering multi-professional multi-specialized services, requiring medical supervision and constant nursing care throughout the day. The patients whose functional deficiency induces a partial disability as a direct consequence of an acute pathological event or as a continuation of a re-education program already in progress, belong to the rehabilitative Day Hospital. The diseases treated are similar to those of inpatient admission listed above.