Season's Greetings

The Institut Chiari & Siringomielia & Escoliosis de Barcelona team wishes you happy holidays and a great start into the New Year 2017! We hope to welcome you as readers again in the next year. 

https://vimeo.com/195433856

When and why should you consider surgery?

We will be addressing some recurring questions among our patients in today's post. 

 

What should you do when your doctor indicates a surgery?

Surgical indication must be the result of a detailed study of the case, which takes into consideration all factors, like possible diagnosis and treatments, age, quality of life, expectations, etc.

When is the application of Filum System® (FS^®) surgical protocol indicated for the Filum Disease?

As soon as possible after the disease has been diagnosed, to eliminate its cause and prevent the pathology from developing further. The diagnosis Filum Disease means that there is a progressive physical and especially a neurological deterioration ongoing.

New addition to our international team

Over the years the ICSEB team has continued to grow, to thereby attend the increase in inquiries from patients from all around the world.

This last year Anoop Tiwari joined the Institut, who is our contact person for patients who speak Hindi or English. Among his work responsibilities we can highlight the translations of medical documents into Hindi and English, as well as IT support for projects related to publishing and communication of contents.

He has a lot of experience in people assistance and care in an international environment, so he has integrated very well into our multicultural team.

   

On personal level he shares with his adoptive culture the values of family and friends, besides his natural tendency to care for others, something that he enriches with one of his passions: cooking, offering creative combinations of flavours of India with those of the rest of the world.

New collaboration with the association Worldwide Syringomyelia & Chiari Task Force

We are pleased to announce that the director of Institut Chiari & Siringomielia & Escoliosis de Barcelona, Dr. Royo Salvador, has been invited to collaborate with the association Worldwide Syringomyelia & Chiari Task Force and to join the medical board of this association that is based in the United States. It aims to educate professionals and patients about the diagnoses that included in the organization’s name.

At the same time, it is promoting a study of these diseases at international level under the auspices of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the National Organization for Rare Disorders in North America.

We are happy to share this collaboration and we hope it will be bring fruitful and lasting results for the benefit of patients throughout the world.

The invitation letter sent to Dr. Royo by the association:

http://institutchiaribcn.com/commons//pdf/communication-letters/Letter-WSCTF-ICSEB.pdf

The Filum Disease and Idiopathic Scoliosis in the adolescence

Observations on idiopathic Scoliosis based on a work presented by Gioia Luè, psychologist, at the 8th CSSf Meeting in Mâcon, France, in 2014. 

 

Patients with scoliosis, in the 12 to 18 age group, talk to us and express their daily life problems and disappointments due to this disease.

The delicacy of their relationship with their changing bodies during adolescence is well known. If to this precarious balance a misalignment of the vertebral column is added, provoking an incorrect posture that is less attractive and requires certain special care, it is readily apparent that the difficulties can go from being physical to social and psychological.

Frequently Asked Questions from our patients (2)

Won’t my spinal cord be moving around on the inside after cutting the filum?

The sectioning of the filum terminale ligament involves the elimination of the anomalous traction that acts on the patient’s spinal cord and nervous system. Once the surgery is performed, the nervous system is liberated, but no tissue changes its position.

Only in some cases we detect that the conus medullaris and the descended cerebellar tonsils, over time and very slowly (normally years after the surgery), may rise by some millimetres.

Dr Horia Salca Calín, an efficient and resolute neurosurgeon

Since June 2015, the Institut Chiari & Siringomielia & Escoliosis de Barcelona counts on the experience of Dr Horia Salca Calín. He is the new member of the medical-surgical team of ICSEB, a neurosurgeon trained in all conventional techniques of neurosurgery and is accredited for the implementation of the Filum System^® Surgery method. Also, he is the part of the Department of Research and Development of the Institut.

 

He graduated in Medicine and Surgery in 1990 from the University of Medicine and Pharmacy (UMF) of Târgu Mureș and specialized in neurosurgery in 1996 from UMF, Bucharest in Romania.            Dr Salca worked in university hospitals with high intensity care activity in Bucharest and Constanza. He did his Specialty Fellowship in Amsterdam (Netherlands) and London (UK) in 1995 and 1996 respectively and achieved the Advanced Specialty Research Diploma (Diplôme d’études avancées de specialization) in Poitiers and Tours (France) between 2003 and 2004. Since 2008, he was the part of the National Health System in the neurosurgery departments of the Hospitals of Tarragona, Almeria and Lleida and last year he joined ICSEB.

Apart of being an attentive medical professional and meticulous neurosurgeon, outside the Institut, Dr. Salca is a nature lover. He enjoys taking care of his garden, hiking and mountain races. He is also a language enthusiast and speaks fluent English, French, Spanish and Catalan, apart from his native Romanian.

Frequently Asked Questions from our patients (1)

I would like to know if an Arnold Chiari I Syndrome can be operated on in an initial phase / I am being told that the descent of my cerebellar tonsils is not a Arnold Chiari I Syndrome, because it is of few millimetres, and that it does not need to be operated. Do you agree with this indication?

As soon as a descent of the cerebellar tonsils is detected, even if it is mild, our specialists study the complementary magnetic resonance scans, and/or others, in order to confirm whether this is due, or not, to a mechanical traction and identify the cause that brings it about.

Example of a mild descent of the cerebellar tonsils.

 If the existence of a mechanical traction of the spinal cord is confirmed, and the cause is an excessively tight filum terminale (Filum Disease), the SFT procedure is indicated as soon as possible in order to eliminate the traction that is traumatizing the spinal cord.




For more Q & A visit our website.

Video Testimonial (Spanish) - Dr. Antonio Victoria, cardiologist.

We are grateful to Dr. Victoria for sharing his personal experience with two cases of Filum Disease in his family: his wife and his daughter.

Cultural mediation in the activities of the Institut Chiari de Barcelona

The Institut Chiari & Siringomielia& Escoliosis de Barcelona (ICSEB) works with patients from all over the world. Since its foundation, a team of international patient care was built in order to support our medical team in communicating with patients of any language or nationality.

With the developments in the last 50 years in the field of Medical Anthropology, a sub-field of Cultural and Social Anthropology, a theory has been developed at international level. This theory deals with the social processes and the cultural representations of health, illness and healthcare or assistance practices related to it.

Thanks to this, we know how important the attention to these aspects is, especially in the healthcare sector, as well as the presence of a professional figure to mediate between the physician and the patient from a different culture in the work ambit.

Institut Chiari de Barcelona community in Russian

To all our readers from Russia: we would like to invite you to also visit our social media option in Russian on vk.com. We hope you will find it of interest.