| The Burn Unit was founded in 1973 during the Yom Kippur War in an effort to treat the numerous burn patients from the war that arrived for treatment at the Sheba Medical Center. Today our burn unit is recognized as the National Referral Unit for treatment of burns in Israel.
The unit is a first-level burn center that receives patient from the entire country and from abroad. We are the only burn unit in Israel with respiratory and intensive care provisions provided in the unit itself. We have nine beds, three of which are prepared for treatment of ventilated patients under full intensive care treatment. The unit serves as a referral center for patients in other burn centers with indication for hospitalization.
Our staff is multidisciplinary and includes plastic surgeons, nurses specially qualified in ICU and burn treatment, a clinical psychologist, physiotherapists and social workers. The daily presence of the multidisciplinary team, as well as the vast experience gained through the years, permits and secures the high quality of treatment and also allows the preparation of patients for the long rehabilitation process that they are obligated to undergo. We are in close collaboration with the microsurgery unit allowing for complicated reconstructions in these patients.
A burn injury is a complicated injury that involves the skin in the first minutes, but rapidly becomes systemic. Patients suffer from recurrent and resistant infections involving the kidneys, the cardiovascular and the respiratory system.
The larger the burn surface the longer the patient will have to stay. Patients are treated as intensive care patients and are subjected to surgical procedures by plastic surgeons or, as needed, by the multidisciplinary surgical teams. The long stay in the unit turns it into a second home for the patients and their families, not only during the time of hospitalization but also for years afterwards. We are proud to be characterized by its highly skilled medical treatment and its successes, while maintaining a homely environment for the patients and their families.
We are highly involved in medical education and our staff teaches medical and nursing students. We provide intensive care courses, prepare teams for critical and emergency medicine at Sheba Medical Center and other hospitals, teach courses at Tel Aviv University and Bar-Ilan University, as well as provide humanitarian aid in foreign countries.
In the future, we hope to enlarge and further develop the unit. We also hope to establish a burn referral knowledge center for teaching and instruction on the national level. And finally, we are committed to furthering our work in burn research, specifically in the areas of skin substitutes and tissue engineering.
| Unit at a Glance |
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Director - Dr. JOSEF HAIK |
| Address - East Wing, Charles Clore Hospitalization Tower |
| E-mail - JOSEF.HAIK@sheba.health.gov.il |
| Tel - 972-3-530-2246 | |
