Szeged will serve as the regional center for the newly established Pediatric traumatology

Pediatric care in Szeged is currently undergoing a transformation, with pediatric emergency and pediatric traumatology services to be introduced next year. The Department of Pediatrics will house the 2 new units, and the latter will be led by Dr. András Vizi, who has been most interested in pediatric traumatology since the beginning of his career.

’The struggle to establish pediatric traumatology as an independent profession has been going on for more than 10 years. Currently, in most health care institutions, traumatologists specialized in adult care perform surgeries on children, even though children require different treatment and, in many cases, different methods due to their small size and growth plates. Last February, the legal framework was finally established for the creation of pediatric traumatology and pediatric emergency departments, allowing both departments to be established at the Department of Pediatrics.

With the renovation of the building, two new operating rooms have been created on the first floor, where pediatric trauma surgeries will be performed. On the second floor, there will be a joint department with pediatric surgery offering a boarder program as well so that mothers can remain in the same room as their baby.

’Currently, these children are operated on at the New Clinic, but with the new operating theatres, all patients can be treated at the Department of Pediatrics in a completely child-friendly environment. There are no special pediatric trauma departments or wards in other towns of the region, so in Kecskemét or Szentes, for example, doctors who treat adults perform the surgery, and then the children are transferred to the pediatric ward after the operation, where, however, there is no experience in caring for trauma patients. Therefore, the aim is to establish cooperation in the region so that more complex cases can be brought directly to Szeged. A pediatric trauma working group will be set up here, consisting of those who have acquired the highest level of expertise in this field, and they will always perform surgery on priority cases’, said Dr. Vizi, describing the plan to overhaul pediatric care.

Emergency care will start in January, and the pediatric trauma department will commence working a little later, but also in the first half of next year. In Szeged, an average of 40-50 injured children are treated every day, and during the two peak seasons in spring and at the start of the school year, 3-4 trauma surgeries are performed daily. Once the independent regional center has been launched, even more surgeries are likely to be performed.

’Although the department has not yet been launched, I already have a 3- and 5-year plan in place, which includes equipment development, a rehabilitation unit, dedicated physiotherapists and psychiatrist for the department, but we would like to focus on educating parents in the new unit as well. I have always believed that caring for injured children should be treated as a priority. Now that this opportunity has arisen in Szeged, I will be working on it full-time’, said András Vizi.