The beginning, year 1972
1972 was the starting year of a project that would turn into the S. Anna Institute over time. It was in this year, in fact, that Croton lawyer Ezio Pugliese created a primary school and a nursery school for his daughter Annarella. In the seventies, the school became an institute for children with health and social problems, moving into preventive medicine. In the new facility, many children with borderline problems are given care and education.
The years of transformation
In the 1990s, the Institute began its transformation to become what it is today. Together with the Department of the Calabria Region, a project was launched that led to the foundation of a neurorehabilitation clinic. With the decisive contribution of Professor Giuliano Dolce, one of Europe’s leading experts on the vegetative state, S. Anna discovered a special vocation for coma patients.
The Awakening Unit
This is how the Awakening Unit was born, one of the first codified units in Italy, a true feather in the Institute’s cap. A scientific committee of absolute value is set up and S. Anna has continuous interchanges with three international centres of the highest level that work on this type of patient: Innsbruck, Bordeaux and Tel Aviv, where staff are sent for training. Together with the Awakening Unit, the entire course of the operational units that follow the patients in their evolution is created: the Severe Cerebral Palsy Unit, Intensive Rehabilitation, the Day Hospital and the Specialised Long Term Care Unit dedicated to patients in a vegetative state for a long time. The Institute is therefore among the first at national level to apply the Therapeutic Continuum operating model, which accompanies the patient in an individualised pathway, in perfect coherence with his or her needs, through the different levels of care intensity.
The new clinic and scientific research
The historical headquarters in Via Siris is now flanked by the modern clinic in Poggio Pudano, and S. Anna is projected for the years to come in the fascinating challenge of scientific research and robotics, which has already led to the design, realisation and application on patients of Aramis, an acronym for Automatic Recovery Arm Motility Integrated System, an innovative instrument for the rehabilitation of the upper limb that represents the most advanced treatment of the entire rehabilitation cycle offered to stroke patients. The Institute is also the starting point for an avant-garde model for home care for patients in a vegetative state and minimally conscious state: Oberon, a service implemented with new procedures and new technologies that provides for home hospitalisation through an advanced telemedicine service and the use of a duly coordinated integrated home care team.
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