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Careggi University Hospital (AOUC) is one of the top performing hospital trusts in Tuscany. It is a University Hospital Trust situated in Florence (Italy) and it is associated with the University of Florence.
We take pride in providing excellent care to our community, offering a variety of services such as inpatient wards, outpatient clinics and emergency care through our eight clinical Departments and the Department of Healthcare Professions. Through the Regional Health System (SSR) and the National Health System (SSN), we work as a wider health organisation to improve and deliver integrated care in Tuscany and more.
AOUC is a large hospital within the city, with a total of 1,095 inpatient beds. Every day, around 250 people access our Accident & Emergency Department, 160 people undergo surgery and 8 babies are born in our Maternity Unit. Our major Accident & Emergency Department treated a total of 89,484 patients in 2021. We employ more than 5,000 members of staff, with around 1,600 medical doctors in training.
As a national scale institution with highly specialised units, AOUC carries out standard general healthcare, medical teaching, and clinical research, with clinical innovation and technology being a large part of its pursuit.
AOUC aims to answer the ever so challenging demands in healthcare, whether that being physical health, mental health, or social care. Teaching is included in every aspect of our mission, as it plays a crucial role in developing and maintaining healthcare professionals’ skills and competencies throughout their studies and careers. Medical research is routinely carried out by our departments, in order to continually improve clinical skills and pharmaceutical knowledge.
We aim to provide local and accessible services, as well as top-rank clinical expertise. Our excellent operational performance sees us being one of the best actors against national standards for accident and emergency care and referral to treatment. The development of new technologies and advances in the neuro-oncological field is of the utmost importance for us, considering that more than 400 patients underwent surgery for brain tumours from 2018 until now. Respecting the principle of the onco-functional balance, our neurosurgical team continuously strives to preserve quality of life for our oncological patients.
AOUC has a high interest in neuro-oncology and technological innovations to provide high-tech surgery, particularly regarding the following main research areas: innovation in intraoperative imaging and fluorescence in neuro-oncology; development of new intraoperative strategies in brain surgery and awake surgery; immuno-neuro-oncology; intraoperative monitoring of brain functions.
The adhesion to the HyperProbe project is aimed at validating ex vivo and in vivo tumour samples to make the application of this new tool feasible in the neurosurgical practice, therefore AOUC undertakes part of the clinical observational studies and the in vivo and ex vivo validation.
Professor Alessandro Della Puppa is the current Chief of the Neurosurgical Department at the Careggi University Hospital (AOUC) and the Director of the Residency School of Neurosurgery. He was the first Neurosurgeon who used the 5-ALA induced fluorescence for glioma surgery in Italy to optimise tumour resection. Since 2008 he has been involved in numerous research and clinical projects as the clinical need developing the intraoperative use of fluorescence (5-ALA and Na-Fluoresceine) to improve the extent of tumour removal, implementing the use of innovative technologies, such as DTI fibre tracking, the neuro-navigated microscope, the integrated MRI and PET scans, intraoperative monitoring of evoked potentials, TMS stimulation, etc. Furthermore, his works have been focusing also on investigating the immunological environment of high-grade and low-grade gliomas, inspecting the various molecular and functional cellular behaviours in different areas of gliomas, leading to the hopefully available future application of immunotherapy in the neuro-oncological field. The new current research perspectives are concentrated on the neuro-cognitive evaluation for neurosurgical patients, and the cerebral plasticity in the field of the ‘awake surgery’. The adhesion to the HyperProbe project has the goal to bring a high technologically advanced instrument in the neurosurgical field.
Doctor Camilla Bonaudo is a resident neurosurgeon at the Residency School of Neurosurgery, Careggi University Hospital (AOUC). Her main interests are focused on the oncological field (functional connectivity, brain plasticity, trans-magnetic stimulation, pre-operative planning, and cognitive rehabilitation).
She is involved in several projects currently, such as: Investigator in the TRAND-CAN ERANET study titled ‘IMMUNOGLIO: In situ immune parameters and their prognostic role on the survival of patient with Glioblastoma’; Principal Investigator in the multicentric study titled: ‘Innovation in Neurosurgery: Advanced cognitive mapping’, Careggi University Hospital (AOUC); Investigator in the study concerning the ’Metabolomic pattern of Gliomas’, Careggi University Hospital (AOUC); Investigator in the bicentric study concerning the ‘Immuno-neuro-imaging’, Careggi University Hospital (AOUC) & University Hospital of Padova; Investigator in the multicentric international study titled: ‘Transforming neuronavigational imaging for assisting brain surgery_HyperProbe application’; Investigator in the multicentric European study Studio PRAEMIUM (Prediction of adverse events after microsurgery far intracranial unruptured aneurysms) ” (Rif CEAVC 19758).
In the HyperProbe project, she is in charge of collecting patient data, taking blood and tumour samples to provide tissue to evaluate the use of this new tool. This will be very helpful in the preclinical application before applying the Hyperprobe directly in the operative theatre.