University Hospital on the Venusberg in Bonn Joe Bausch opens outpatient clinic for undiagnosed children
BONN · The actor and physician Joe Bausch, known from the Tatort crime series among others, opens the outpatient clinic for children without diagnosis on the Venusberg in Bonn. At the university hospital, doctors get to the bottom of rare diseases, like detectives get to the bottom of a crime.
For parents of children who have complaints but can’t get a diagnosis from the doctors, there is now a contact point at the University Hospital Bonn. Those who suffer and received no real help usually have a long odyssey behind them.
Thanks to the Kinderträume Foundation, which supports the project with around 300,000 Euro per year for a total of seven years, the clinic has now been able to set up an outpatient clinic for children without a medical diagnosis.
It bears the somewhat unwieldy name Interdisciplinary Competence Unit for Patients without Diagnosis, or InterPoD for short. It was opened on Wednesday afternoon in the lecture hall of the German Centre for Degenerative Diseases (DZNE) by actor and general practitioner Joe Bausch.
He is the patron of the centre and knows from his own experience how terrible it is for parents when their own child is ill. If the child is also suffering from a rare disease that is not immediately diagnosed, it is all the worse.
Up to 8000 rare diseases
A disease is considered rare if less than five out of 10,000 people are affected. It is estimated that there are up to 8000 rare diseases that are often inherited. According to doctors, 75 percent of rare diseases affect children, and about one in three of them dies before the age of five.
The InterPoD is now the only one in North Rhine-Westphalia that treats adults, children and adolescents equally. Since 2014, there has been an outpatient clinic for adults. Thanks to the donation, we now have time to deal intensively with the diseases of the young patients," said Dr. Christiane Stieber, coordinator of the Centre for Rare Diseases (ZSEB) at the University Hospital. And this is also necessary in order to get to the bottom of unclear findings: "We cannot initiate treatment without a diagnosis," said Bausch.
The medical director of the ZSEB, Dr. Martin Mücke, calls it "thinking outside the box" when doctors and scientists get to the bottom of the matter. "You have to think of zebras when you see horses," he added.
Although they couldn't promise anything as doctors in the outpatient department, they will take the time to take a close look at everything and investigate. And because such an outpatient clinic should also be suitable for children, Lina and Leon explained their view of things. The two did the MC job at the opening together with Bausch.
(Original text: Susanne Wächter, Translation: Mareike Graepel)
