After being shot at close range, 37-year-old Yoram* was rushed to the Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein Z" L Shock Trauma Room at Rambam Health Care Campus (Rambam) in Haifa, Israel. The doctors found that Yoram's mobile phone had incidentally saved him from serious injury.
Rambam’s new eight-bed shock trauma intensive care unit. Top Left Inset) The mobile phone that saved Yoram's life.
Photography: Rambam HCC.
Yoram, a resident of Northern Israel, had been shot several times. While receiving emergency treatment in Rambam’s Shock Trauma Room, his attending physician noticed Yoram’s mobile phone in his pants pocket. Upon closer examination, the doctor found that the telephone absorbed the impact of one of the bullets and protected Yoram from serious injury.
After being successfully stabilized, Yoram was transferred to Rambam’s new Shock-Trauma Intensive Care Unit (ICU) – the first patient to be received by the only ICU of its kind in the region.
When asked about the new eight-bed shock trauma ICU, Dr. Hany Bahouth, director of the Division of Emergency Medicine & Trauma and medical director of the Teaching Center for Trauma Systems, Emergency, and Mass Casualty Situations (MCS), comments, “The new ICU is improving multiple aspects of trauma treatment. I am thrilled that we have been able to open this impressive facility for the ongoing care of our shock-trauma patients.”
Professor Michael Halberthal, director general and CEO of Rambam, explains more about the concept of the new ICU, “It is treating patients whose medical needs cannot be met in a regular ward and whose intensive treatment and observation can be quite different from that needed in a standard ICU. I promised to establish this new shock-trauma ICU, and now, it’s up and running.”
Gila Hyams, Rambam’s director of nursing and director of the Teaching Center for Trauma, Emergency and MCS, concludes, “I have come full circle. I started out at Rambam in the trauma section. Many contribute to ensuring our trauma patients receive the best care possible.”
Rambam is the only Level 1 trauma center in the north of Israel and the referral hospital for 10 district hospitals. The shock-trauma facilities are the heartbeat of all trauma activity at Rambam.
*Not the patient’s actual name