With the incorporation of Dr. Claudia Flores, improvements are planned, such as the creation of the Peritoneal Dialysis Unit.
The Mateu Orfila Hospital has increased the staff of the Nephrology Service from three specialists to four, to improve care for patients in Menorca who require diagnosis, treatment and monitoring of kidney diseases and renal function replacement treatments.
With the hiring of this fourth specialist, the team is made up of Dr. Luis Fernando Domínguez, head of the service, Dr. Sergio Ibáñez and Dr. David Meza and Dr. Claudia Flores, who joined on 2 January.
TDB keeps you informed. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram
The Mateu Orfila Hospital expands the team of the Nephrology Service by hiring a fourth specialist
Dr. Flores has a degree in Medicine from the Universidad Mayor Real y Pontificia San Francisco Xavier de Chuquisaca, in Bolivia. She specialised in Nephrology in 2018 at the Hospital Vall d’Hebrón, in Barcelona, and completed a research fellowship in Clinical Nephrology at St. Michael’s Hospital and Sunnybrook Hospital, in Toronto (Canada). He comes to Menorca after four years working in different hospitals in Catalonia.
The presentation of the expansion of the Nephrology Service team took place this morning at a media event attended by the manager of the Menorca Health Area, Dr. Bernardo Pax; the medical director, Dr. Eva Egea; the head, assistant doctors and nursing supervisor of the Service, as well as the president of ALCER, Loli Ametller, and various members of the association’s Board of Directors.
The addition of four specialists will improve patient care and expand services. To begin with, outpatient nephrology consultations will be able to be kept open throughout the year, given the possibility of covering specialists’ holiday shifts. In this sense, it should be remembered that having haemodialysis units in operation at the Mateu Orfila Hospital and at the Canal Salat Health Centre (Ciutadella) means that a doctor must be on duty at each unit during sessions with patients.
The creation of the Peritoneal Dialysis Unit is also planned for this year in order to attend to an improvement long demanded by the Menorca association of renal patients. Peritoneal dialysis is, together with haemodialysis and renal transplant, a treatment to replace renal function: it consists of eliminating excess toxins and liquids from the body through the peritoneum, the natural membrane that covers the organs in the abdominal cavity. This type of treatment requires the collaboration of the Surgery Department, as a catheter must first be implanted in the patient’s abdomen to infuse the dialysis fluid into the peritoneal cavity and subsequently drain it.
Before offering this treatment option to patients with advanced chronic kidney disease, it is necessary to train the nursing staff of the department and acquire the necessary equipment for this type of therapy, which has many benefits, because each patient can apply it at home after completing the learning of the technique, taught by the nursing staff of the department.
Psychological support
The Nephrology Service currently treats 28 patients with advanced chronic kidney disease, but every year two or three people are diagnosed in Menorca who require some kind of kidney function replacement treatment. To offer the emotional support that these people may need, the Menorca Health Area has established a protocol to prioritise referrals of this patient profile to the Psychology Service.
Activity
During the 2024 financial year, the Nephrology Service attended a total of 2,085 consultations, of which 199 were first visits and 1,886 were subsequent consultations. There were also 54 follow-up consultations by telephone.
As for haemodialysis treatments, an average of 35 patients were treated each month in 2024, 21 at the Mateu Orfila Hospital and 14 at the Canal Salat Health Centre, including the 45 patients treated during the holidays they spent on the island. A total of 4,083 sessions were carried out in the two centres (13.2% more than the previous year), 2,407 of which corresponded to the Hospital and 1,676 to the Health Centre.
Haemodialysis sessions are currently held from Monday to Saturday at the Mateu Orfila Hospital and on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at the Canal Salat Health Centre.
Haemodialysis in the ICU
One of the innovations implemented by the Nephrology Department last year is the possibility of carrying out haemodialysis sessions in the hospital’s ICU for patients with poor haemodynamic stability who have a sudden decrease or loss of renal function. To apply this treatment, a nurse, a portable water plant and a haemodialysis monitor are brought to the ICU box, which has been adapted for this purpose.