What do we do?
The Anaesthesiology Department and the Pain Clinic Anaesthesiology ensure an extensive range of activities in anaesthetics, postoperative care, postoperative care management and chronic pain management. The department treats about 18,000 patients per year.
Anaesthesiologists are responsible for the safe and effective anaesthesia of patients during surgical or obstetric procedures. They also evaluate patients’ preoperative condition to assess risk and the need for additional preoperative exams etc. so as to determine the safest possible approach to anaesthesia and postoperative developments. Anaesthesiologists will primarily implement medical practices which aim to:
• subdue a patient’s sensation of pain and of physical and emotional stress during surgical, obstetric or medical procedures,
• safeguard vital functions during physiological stress resulting from surgical procedures,
• stabilise vital functions in unconscious patients during medical, diagnostic or therapeutic situations,
• treat various disorders of fluid, electrolyte or organ functionality before and after operations.
Anaesthesiologists are also responsible for the provision of supporting respiration to patients and for cardiac and respiratory reanimation (among others, in emergency care and in intensive therapeutic units).
Thanks to their specific skills involving invasive treatments of medical and oncologic pathology, Anaesthesiologists contribute to the pharmacological therapy of acute, postoperative pain and of complex acute and chronic pain syndromes.
Anaesthesiology is also embedded in the organisation of operating quarters and day clinics. The main clinical activities of Anaesthesiology comprise:
- preoperative consultation for adults, children and a recently inaugurated obstetrics consultation,
- the provision of perioperative medical care and anaesthesia during surgical procedures,
- postoperative care in the Post Anaesthesia Care Unit (PACU),
- the acute pain service,
- pain Clinic Anaesthesiology,
- obstetrics,
- sedation or anaesthetic techniques during diagnostic or therapeutic procedures.
The Anaesthetics Department applies the Belgian Belgian Guidelines for Safety in Anaesthesia of the Belgian Association for Anesthesia and Reanimation. This implies that the Anaesthesiologists at UZ Brussel make considered choices from among the available anaesthetic techniques. They also uphold the best possible conditions so as to guarantee the safety of patients.