As part of the cycles organised to celebrate the centre’s 50th anniversary, on 16 and 17 March, two new conferences on health issues were held in L’Hospitalet and El Prat by Bellvitge University Hospital (HUB) professionals.
On 16 March, a hundred people filled the Casal de la Gent Gran de Can Serra in L'Hospitalet to listen to Dr Pere Cardona's lecture "Stroke: prevention, detection and treatment". Dr Cardona, director of the Stroke Unit and the Neurovascular Programme at the HUB, explained what a stroke is, what types there are, how to detect them, how to act in the event of a suspected stroke and what treatments exist for each case.
Together with the attendees, who were very participative and willing to explain their experiences, he gave an overview of the risk factors associated with stroke and the ways to avoid the risk of suffering it. With the phrase "time is brain", he emphasised the importance of attending to the patient who has just suffered a stroke as soon as possible in order to achieve maximum recovery afterwards...
He added that, thanks to advances in recent years, solutions can now be offered to people who previously had few therapeutic options. He explained what the stroke code is: the urgent action protocol that is activated to provide immediate and appropriate care to patients with suspected stroke. He also explained how Bellvitge Hospital provides telematic support to regional hospitals that do not have a 24-hour neurologist. To this end, the regional hospitals have cameras that allow them to follow the patient from the HUB and tools for sharing CT images and other tests, so that the HUB neurologists can provide initial diagnostic guidance and even treatment, advising a transfer to another centre if necessary. This ensures that everyone has access to the best possible care, optimising available resources.
Regarding the differences in the incidence of stroke between men and women, he explained that it is not due to genetic issues, but because women live longer and, as age is a risk factor, the overall number of women who suffer a stroke is higher. She added that many of these women are widowed and live alone, and therefore the time it takes them to get to hospital after a stroke is also longer, which affects their prognosis for recovery.
The prevention of ED, the focus in El Prat
On the other hand, the conference on 17 March in El Prat at the Palmira Domènech Centre Cívic in El Prat, Isabel Sánchez-Díaz, assistant psychologist at the Eating Disorders Unit and the Obsessive-Compulsive Disorders Unit of the HUB’s Psychiatry Service, and Lucia Camacho-Barcia, researcher at the same unit and IDIBELL, spoke about the prevention of eating disorders to about sixty people.
They underlined that eating disorders are more than a problem with food; they are the great unknown despite everyone believing they know about them. EDs have a higher incidence in Western countries, although they exist everywhere. They do not
specifically affect women more, but men find it harder to seek help for a problem that has sociocultural, individual and biological risk factors.
Both professionals reviewed the evolution of the concept of beauty through time and cultures, stressing how unattainable stereotypes generate dissatisfaction. Thus, they claimed to be critical with those stereotypes, which are spread by advertising and on the Internet, as they can lead to disorders. In the face of this, they stressed, it is essential that we as a society react at once.
They referred to the individual factors that key to developing EDs, such as self-esteem, social skills, perfectionism, personal dissatisfaction and the management of emotions, which must be expressed. In this sense, they indicated that it is necessary to improve self-esteem as an element of protection.
The difference between nourishment and nutrition is also very important. Eating becomes a problem when we are not concerned with nutrition but with weight loss, they stressed. Reducing calories is not the secret to weight loss, but if we eat with proper nutrition in mind, we can self-regulate. It is necessary to make sure that we really consume the necessary amount of healthy food, that we do so at regular times, and that we are well hydrated. There is no bad food if there are no pathologies, they said.
One of the warning elements to detect possible problems is the change in personality. The problem is not the food, since it is the way of expressing the problem. Finally, they explained how lockdown has led to an explosion of cases in people with risk factors due to the stress it has entailed.