Key figure
-Location:16th Floor, No.3 Building
-63 Staff: 21 physicians, 30 nurses, 12 technicians
-64 ward beds
Introduction of the department of rheumatology
Department of rheumatology was founded by Professor Yu Buyun in 1978 as the earliest rheumatology department in China. The department is the leader of rheumatology in Guangdong province and the founder of rheumatology branch of Guangdong Medical Association. It’s one of the clinical key specialties, clinical key disciplines of the Sun yat-sen University and Guangdong province. The department has two inpatient wards (with a total of 64 beds), one outpatient department and one rheumatology research center (covering about 2000 square meters). It’s now the largest doctoral and postdoctoral station with the most comprehensive specialties in rheumatology in Guangdong and Southern China.
In 1986, the department received the accreditation of “Clinical Pharmacological Research Base of Anti-rheumatic Drugs” (now renamed “Rheumatology Group of the National Food and Drug Administration”) from the Ministry of Health of China. In 2007, the department is approved as “Rheumatology Specialist Training Base” of the Ministry of Health. In Dec 2013, it’s authorized as the “National Key Specialty Construction Project Department”
Specialty Team
Under the leadership of the former and current academic leader: Professor Yu Buyun and Gu Jieruo, the department has formed a multidisciplinary professional team for clinical, research and teaching with high reputation in rheumatology domestically and internationally. Our department has a total of 63 employees, among them, 6 physicians have senior title, 8 physicians has senior vice title, and 3 nurses have senior title.
Advancing Medical Technology
We are highly experienced in treating common, difficult and critical disease. The department is the innovator of a number of diagnosis and treatment technologies for severe rheumatic diseases in Guangdong province, such as joint and muscle ultrasound technology, kidney labial gland skin biopsy, spinal and joint physical and occupational therapy, treatment with mesenchymal stem cells, and common autoantibody detection in rheumatology. Our cure rate of severe acute conditions, such as the lupus crisis, rapidly progressive lupus nephritis and severe central nervous system damage, rheumatism secondary pulmonary fibrosis and pulmonary hypertension is over 95%.
Teaching and Harvest
Our department started to provide master’s program since 1988 and doctoral program since 2002. More than 80 students, including master, doctoral and postdoctoral student have graduated from here. Most of them have become the academic leaders in hospitals around the country. Since we carried out specialists, nurses, laboratory technicians training in the early 1990s while holding national rheumatic seminars each year, a large number of health professionals that we cultivated have become the backbone of rheumatology around the country. Many leaders of rheumatology department in the first class hospitals in Guangdong Province, such as the Second Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, Guangdong Provincial People's Hospital, Sun Yat-sen Memorial hospital and Guangdong No.2 Provincial People's Hospital used to work or receive training for many years in our center. More than 4,000 healthcare workers, including those from mainland China, Hong Kong and Macao, have received professional and technical training from our department.
High Productive Research
Our department has won more than 4,000 million grants in total from national, provincial and municipal-level scientific research fund. Professor Gu Jieruo obtained national outstanding youth fund in 2003. 563 academic research papers have been published on foreign journals, 56 of those are published on SCI indexed journals (including 1 paper published on the top international journal Nature Genetics) in recent years. Our researches have gained attention from scholars around the world. Three years ago, the department started to held "Chinese Ankylosing Spondylitis International Forum" every year. More than 1,400 people from 26 countries have participated the forum to promote international academic exchange in rheumatology.
Attention to Social Welfare, and Social Return
In order to establish a platform for communication between rheumatism patients and physicians, we built the "China Health Promotion Foundation for Ankylosing Spondylitis Patients and Expert Consultants" and ankylosing spondylitis public website (http://www.as-china.org). The number of registered member has reached 1,000. The platform promotes standardized diagnosis, treatment, patient education, and follow-up care. At the same time, the founding of "Today Rheumatism Home" and the other national key social welfare projects aimed at helping more patients to overcome diseases has shows significant positive social effect.
In the future, we will continue adhering to hospital mission while promoting a spirit of life-saving, pragmatic, striving for excellence, and close collaboration. We will strengthen medical quality management, keeping up with domestic and internationally advances in diagnosis and treatment for rheumatism, and continue to develop an advantage in scientific research. Most importantly, we will invest great efforts to provide better and more effective healthcare services for domestic and international patients.
