The Miguel Perez Carreño Hospital in Caracas, Venezuela, will soon have Latin America’s largest intensive care unit, according to an announcement this week by the hospital’s director, Dr. Angel Borrero Auld. He said that once a construction project finishes in August, the hospital’s intensive care unit will have 46 beds: 32 for adults and 14 for children.

Currently, the largest intensive care unit in the region is located in Chile, with nearly 30 beds. From among the beds in the hospitalization area at Perez Carreño Hospital, six spots will be reserved for adult patients that require isolation, and six for children, Borrero said. The facilities will be equipped with high-tech equipment and modern beds with medical mattresses.

“We will assist patients in critical condition and those who need respiration support”, Borrero said.

Other projects being developed at the Perez Carreño Hospital include a dentistry service, which will begin operations later this month, he confirmed. The Perez Carreño Hospital will be the first public medical center to have a dental prosthetics lab, which will operate together with Mission Smile (Mision Sonrisa) a free dental care program run by Venezuela’s Health Ministry.

Soon, the hospital’s neurosurgery service will open a radiosurgery area. According to Dr. Borrero, this will allow “a patient who had a tumor and needed a craniotomy can now undergo a simple robotic surgery”.

OTHER NEW AREAS

An area for triage was recently opened in the hospital’s internal medicine unit, with six beds for patients who require observation while doctors determine the proper treatment. This area will also have an asthma treatment area with nebulizers (or inhalers) with six seats and five consultation offices.

According to Borrero, triage for internal medicine previously did not exist at the hospital. The emergency room only had a small waiting area shared by patients regardless of the severity of their condition.

“Now we separate those who come in for surgical care from those who come in for clinical treatment”, he said.

The hospital’s emergency room for internal medicine assists over 2,000 patients each month.

In August, the Perez Carreño Hospital’s new cardiology unit will celebrate its first anniversary. It has a modern hemodynamic monitoring room with a hybrid operating room equipped to handle surgeries of varying complexity.

“With the equipment and the doctor’s abilities, we can now more easily address conditions that would previously have required open heart surgery”, the director said.