The Burn Center in Ostrava opened on October 11, 1954. 30 beds were allocated from the Surgical Department of the KÚNZ (Regional Health Office) in Ostrava - Zábreh. Integration with a county hospital permitted the close interdisciplinary teamwork that is essential for specialized center. Officially, the Department opened to the public on December 4, 1954.
The opening of the Department is associated with the names of Vera Reiblová, PhD, who was Head of the Department for 3 months prior to the official opening, and Professor Václav Karfik, who was Head of the Department during the first six months of its existence. After he left for Brno, Jiri Kalina, MD was appointed (within the Surgical Department of KÚNZ Regional Health Office, which was led by Kamil Typovsky). Jiri Kalina was also Head of the Department after it was established as an independent Center, in 1967. After his departure ěn 1972, Miroslav Jezek, MD took over. After his retirement in 1982, my predecessor Monika Adamkova, MD continued until 1991. In recalling the significant personalities who have contributed to the operation and propagation of the Burn Center in Ostrava, it is necessary to mention Professor Rajko Dolecek, MD, with his works focused on the endocrine reaction after burn injury. This cooperation, with grant support. continues until to this day. This year a partnership between the Burn Center and the Medical Social Faculty of Ostrava University began for undergraduate students.
At the begining of the Department, the personnel as well as the equipment corresponded to the economic situation and perspective of how to approach the treatment of a burn patient. The treatment was focused on local interventions to the burned area. The increased number of surgical interventions in the 70s and 80s, and particularly surgical necronectomy, required the procurement of biological grafts.
Firstly. native xenografts were used. In the early 90s we started to preserve xenografts in glycerol. To accomplish the method of mixed transplantation on our workplace in 1991, we also used glycerol to preserve allografts. We cooperated with the Transplantation Center on allograft harvesting until 2002. Since the passing of the law on tissue and organ harvesting, we have used and prepared allografts for children solely by harvesting from their parents, due to a decreased availability. Currently we are completing personal, instrumental, and structural equipment for preparation of epidermal grafts in the skin-, or tissue-bank. At the beginning of 2003 we utilized the artificial skin Integra for the first time at our workplace. With the development of the intensive care for burn patients. we have gradually achieved improvements on the personnel level, and we have improved the equipment at our Department, particularly after we moved to the area in Ostrava - Poruba in 1995. While in the 1970s only 30 members of staff took care of burn patients, using two ECG monitors of the Chirana brand and two infusion pumps, currently we have 50 staff, with one nurse per patient in intensive care. The intensive care unit is equipped with six separate areas with laminar airconditioning, allowing for open and semi-open care of burn patients. The intensive care unit has three air and three anti-decubital beds, central monitoring, four ventilators and 15 times more infusion pumps as well as injectotnats. We also have an artificial kidney machine for the benefit of burn patients. We use it for patients who are developing a syndrome of systemic inflammatory response syndrome. During the reconstruction of the standard bed unit, we have equipped four rooms as a post-critical care unit. This allows us to hospitalize greater number of extensively burned patients at the same time, which became useful particularly after a mass injury incident in October 2003. The 24-bed standard unit is a part of the workplace, which as well as intensive care can be used interchangeably for the treatment of adults or children. Next, there are two operation rooms, an admission room connected to the intensive care unit. an outpatient department. and a skin bank, which after reconstruction will be integrated into the tissue bank complex.
The Burn Center of FNsP Hospital in Ostrava, with the cooperation of pediatric resuscitation, intensive care and other specialist departments, ensures optimum care of extensivelyburned children as well as adults of all age groups and levels of care required from the Northern Moravia region - and, if necessary, from other parts of the Czech Republic. We have an excellent partnership with the antibiotic unit of the Medical Institute based in Ostrava, which allows for fast reaction to changes of the bacteriological situation in our Department and allows us to treat nosocomial infections successfully. Numerical data from the statistic kept by the FNsP Hospital in Ostrava, and from the Department's own documentation, indicates the amount of work completed in the past years. Since the foundation of the Center we have hospitalized 25.000 patients and completed 424,000 items of outpatient treatment for 61,000 patients. In the Center's operation rooms an average of 5,500 operations per year have been performed, of which 1,200 were urgent and required general anesthesia. Since the beginning of 1995 we have completed 60 continual eliminations with a total time of 7.400 hours. In the first 5 years this was under the control of nephrologists/intensive care specialists. while in the past 4 years this has been performed independently.
The physical and psychological intensity of the work, as well as the demanding localized treatment of burn patients-which is not always successful - is challenging for staff at all levels, which can lead to psychological overload of the staff. To a greater extent in the past than today, this has manifested itself in increased turnover of doctors as well as nurses. Thanks to the concerns of the current leadership of the Faculty Hospital, we have managed to stabilize the personnel situation. The new continuing education system should allow for speedier education of doctors in the burn injury discipline and allow them to participate in the Burn Center even during their preparation for attestation.
In conclusion, I would like to thank all my co-workers, who in the past as well as at present have. in their everyday work, participated in the demanding and difficult treatment of burn injury patients and contributed to their return to normal life. I would also like to thank them for their efforts, which have helped to forge the excellent reputation enjoyed by the Burn Center in Ostrava.
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