The Puigvert Foundation opens a new 1,500 square meter dialysis unit

With the aging of the population, cases of chronic kidney failure are expected to increase. Currently, more than seven million people suffer from this syndrome in Spain and some 70,000 patients are on dialysis or have received a kidney transplant. With the aim of offering better care, the Puigvert Foundation has invested around half a million euros in a new dialysis unit at its facilities in Barcelona. It has done so after reaching an agreement with the German multinational Fresenius Medical Care, which will provide them with state-of-the-art machinery and specialized technologies for this treatment, which consists of cleaning the blood in place of a diseased kidney.

The new unit will have an area of 1,500 square meters, double the previous one, according to the corporate director of the Puigvert Foundation, Roger Abad. The number of beds also grows, up to 30, and, adapting to the pandemic, the distance between each patient increases. It will be located at the private management center's headquarters on Cartagena Street, in the Sant Pau Modernist Enclosure.

"It is a long-term agreement," emphasizes Abad, which should allow for the technological evolution of the healthcare institution promoted by Professor Antoni Puigvert. In turn, the hospital center will clinically validate new tools that Fresenius Medical Care, based in Bad Homburg, will be able to extend more generally.

One of the characteristics of the new dialysis service will be the creation of predictive models on the evolution of the disease in patients. The use of technologies such as machine learning and artificial intelligence will allow centralizing all the data generated by patients and performing statistical analyses that allow identifying patterns and establishing predictions about how they will respond to treatments. In 2020, the Puigvert Foundation performed more than 30,000 dialysis sessions.

Likewise, the Puigvert Foundation wants to strengthen collaboration with Primary Care, which is where cases of chronic kidney failure are detected. To do so, it will promote specific knowledge of this specialty in CAPs through training courses. The objective is to improve early diagnosis and optimize the care of renal patients in the initial stages of the disease, a key element to reduce its severity, Abad emphasizes.

Home care will be another leg of this new service that this concerted healthcare institution wants to offer. With Fresenius Medical Care technology, a greater number of renal patients will be encouraged to be treated at home, reducing the inconvenience of traveling for dialysis, especially if they have mobility problems.