Andalucía to set up committee to coordinate amputations for children and adolescents, the first in Spain
The initiative was prompted by the family of Sarah Almagro, the young parasurfer from Malaga who had to have her feet and hands amputated in 2018, as a result of meningococcal meningitis
Amputations for children and adolescents aren't common, but they have an enormous impact with physical, psychological and economic consequences for patients and their families. However, next year, Spain's Andalucía will have an interdisciplinary committee, consisting of different medical departments, to coordinate the amputation process. The goal is to improve the patient's quality of life afterwards. The initiative, being the first in the country, symbolises a new chapter in what was a struggle for the family of Sarah Almagro, the young parasurfer from Malaga who had to have her feet and hands amputated in 2018, as a result of meningococcal meningitis.
"Sarah has been to the operating room four times for reamputations that could have been avoided"
The need to coordinate the whole amputation process is something that the Almagro family has been calling for since 2018, so that "no one goes through what we have gone through due to lack of coordination and ignorance. Sarah has been in the operating theatre four times for amputations that could have been avoided if it had been done properly from the beginning," explained her father, Ismael Almagro.
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The regional committee will be a governing body that, as in the case of transplants, will direct and coordinate with medical departments involved, before and after every decision taken in the process, in order to improve the subsequent life of the amputee and to help them transition to prosthetics. "The fact that an amputee can return to work takes the financial burden off the administration and allows the patient to recover part of their former life," added Almagro.
The aim is to have "plastic surgeons who look after the amputated limb, traumatologists who study joint functioning and the prevention of joint disease, vascular surgeons who ensure that blood circulates through the damaged muscle, rehabilitators who set the standards for functional recovery, prosthetists who recommend the most suitable prosthestic for each person and their lifestyle, physiotherapists who lead exercises for functional recovery and psychologists who help during such a tough therapy process," explained Almagro.
The Andalusian regional government's Ministry of Health stated, after being requested by the Almagro family, that it is finalising "the constitution of an autonomous committee for child and adolescent amputations for the assessment of cases and referral to reference units according to the degree of complexity", which will become operational next year.
This is Sarah Almagro's family's first battle to ensure that no one is put in a situation like the one they went through. Firstly, they successfully got the tetravalent vaccine included in the vaccination schedule, which would have protected their daughter from meningitis. Thanks to their efforts and Andalucia's transparency portal, Junta, Andalusian children are now vaccinated against this type of meningitis. Shortly afterwards, they pushed for the public healthcare system to finance the prosthetic feet and hands that now allow Sarah to live an independent life, which until then they had to pay for themselves, because the ones that were covered were more aesthetic than functional.
Access to history
On the other hand, Almagro criticised that the transparency council hadn't complied with their request to order the Andalusian health public service (SAS) to provide "proof of unauthorised access to his daughter Sarah's medical records from hospitals and health centres by health personnel who were not involved in her treatment".
