University Hospital of Köln

Treatment in a foreign country raises many questions: issuing visas, sending medical documents, interpreter services and more.

To make sure that international patients use the hospital services as comfortably and safely as possible, they are provided with coordinators. They help with all organisational matters.

• Many innovative treatments and drugs are clinically tested here and become available to patients sooner than in other institutions. These include drugs for targeted therapy and chemotherapy.

• In 2005, the Cologne Hospital opened the Cologne-Bonn Centre for Integrated Oncology (CIO). More than 30 specialised centres and institutes operate here. Every year, the CIO treats over 24,000 patients.

• The University Hospital of Köln has opened Germany's first stereotactic and functional neurosurgery hospital. Patients with neurological diseases such as Parkinson's disease and dystonia are treated here. The clinic also treats patients with obsessive-compulsive disorders and severe depression by implanting electrodes in damaged areas of the brain.

• The hospital has a navigation app, UKKöln Navi, which helps patients navigate around the hospital premises. The system contains detailed information about the opening times of the pharmacies, canteen, cafeteria, chapel and playground on the health centre grounds. Further destinations can be added to the UKKöln Navi if required.

The University Hospital of Cologne offers preventive screenings for the early detection of various types of cancer. A check-up programme is available for women, which aims to diagnose breast cancer.

The Department of Nuclear Medicine performs multimodal imaging diagnostics as well as radionuclide therapy for various malignant diseases. Thyroid tumours, neuroblastoma, lymphoma and other malignant pathologies are diagnosed and treated here.

Autologous BMT

Autologous stem cell transplantation has been performed at the University Hospital of Cologne since 1992. The patient's own, previously harvested and cryopreserved cells are used for the transplant. Material for transplantation is collected in the Haematopheresis Department. About 140 autologous BMTs are performed each year at the hospital. This method of bone marrow transplantation is indicated in the treatment of Hodgkin's and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma as well as multiple myeloma.

Allogeneic BMT

Allogeneic bone marrow transplants have been carried out at this centre since 1999. This type of transplantation involves the use of donor material. Preference is given to stem cells from a related donor. The material is taken from the haematopheresis unit. If no suitable related donor is available, an unrelated donor from a worldwide stem cell registry will be sought. The Köln Clinic has access to German and international donor databases.

Catheter-assisted aortic valve replacement (TAVI) has been available at the University Hospital of Köln since 2008. This minimally invasive procedure has been performed on more than 1,500 patients.

The latest Haag-Streit Surgical microscopes and BrainLab navigation systems are actively used here. These systems increase the precision of the surgeon's interventions on the spine and brain.

There are 10 top-class doctors and 24 assistants who can help patients. Every year, 2,800 surgeries are carried out at the hospital. Of these, around 1,800 are spinal interventions.

The Clinic for Orthopaedics and Traumatology collaborates with the Centre for Clinical Research in Musculoskeletal Treatment. This enables innovative technologies to be quickly introduced into the work with difficult patients and achieve success.