Clinic for Anaesthesiology, Intensive Care and Analgesic Therapy

As an integral part of RKU, the Clinic for Anaesthesiology, Intensive Care and Analgesic Therapy is responsible for the patients' freedom from pain as well as for monitoring and maintaining the functions of all vital organs as orthopedic and operative care during and immediately after an operation. Our anaesthetists apply all currently available techniques and technologies, focussing on methods of regional anaesthesia. All larger operations involving a substantial loss of blood make use of the patient's own blood while avoiding foreign blood as best as possible. Anaesthetists fuse with the methods of our discipline to take a team share in the treatment of acute and chronic pain.

Under its anaesthesiologic direction, our interdisciplinary intesive care unit treats neurologic, orthopaedic and paralysed patients. Medical drugs, methods and the required technical equipment are available for monitoring and therapies (including artificial respiration and supplementary renal treatment). Wherever in the hospital there may by a case of potentially fatal emergency, our sophisticated in-house alarm system will bring the department's staff there quickly and at any time.

In a team effort with the Muscle Centre of Ulm University, our Functional Diagnostics Department offer consulting hours to patients suffering from chronically progressive respiratory failure caused by a neuromuscular disease (such as Duchenne's disease, spinal muscular atrophy, etc.); if the case requires, non-invasive respiration at nighttime is started (by our intensive care unit) on hospitalised patients to try out respiration at home to follow later under the clinic's care and guidance.

Other responsibilities of the Clinic for Anaesthesiology, Intensive Care and Analgesic Therapy cover the hospital's autologous blood bank (hosting a depot affiliated to the Ulm blood donor centre of German Red Cross) and the organisational management of the clinic's central laboratory.