Outpatient Intensive Care

After an accident or a severe illness, ventilation and tracheal cannulas are often essential life-savers but not every patient manages to regain the ability to breathe independently. They remain dependent on ventilation and/or a tracheal cannula for a long time or even permanently, which is associated with a considerable loss of quality of life and independence.

Innovative concepts of neurological rehabilitation can help these people. The Fürst Donnersmarck Foundation is opening up new perspectives for a life without a ventilator and/or tracheal cannula with its Specialist Department for Rehabilitative Outpatient Intensive Care. We prepare our clients for imminent weaning with intensive care and therapy

The specialist department for Rehabilitative Outpatient Intensive Care is primarily aimed at people with acquired damage to the central nervous system who have been fitted with a tracheal cannula and/or invasive ventilation. This is an offering that makes consistent use of the clients’ existing potentials for decannualisation and/or weaning by means of professional, activating care with a rehabilitative focus. To do this, the specialist department combines professional outpatient intensive care with targeted medical care and customised therapeutic offerings. The clients’ potential is regularly checked in the specialist department with the help of its specially developed assessment based on the early rehab Barthel index. The offering is located on the site of the P.A.N. Center for Post-Acute Neuro-Rehabilitation of the Fürst Donnersmarck Foundation and makes use of its infrastructure.

Outpatient Intensive Care

• Special clinical observation, monitoring of vital functions
• Tracheostoma care/tracheal cannula change, tracheal cannula management,
• Secretion management
• Training to extend spontaneous breathing phases
• Medication management, wound care and other
• treatment services prescribed by doctors
• Personal hygiene, mobilisation, cleaning the apartment,
• Buying toiletries, personal laundry
• Accompanying to necessary medical examinations

Medical Provision from External Cooperations

• General practitioner care, neurology, orthopaedics, urology, ENT

Using the Therapy Offerings of the P.A.N. Center

• Speech therapy, physiotherapy, occupational therapy, neuro-psychology

The specialist department is aimed at people with an entitlement to outpatient intensive care and potential for rehabilitation. The focus is on people with damage to the central nervous system who still wear a tracheal cannula and/or are mechanically ventilated and whose in-patient hospital treatment or in-patient neurological early rehab has already come to an end. This includes the following diagnoses in particular:

• Cerebral ischaemia
• Intracerebral bleeding
• Hypoxic brain damage
• Condition after encephalitis
• Craniocerebral trauma
• Guillain Barrée syndrome or CIDP
• Critical illness neuropathy