After Care
Tips and Information for your Road to Recovery
An aftercare booklet and instructions of how to care for your pin sights will be given to you by the Treatment Radiographers after the frame has been removed. The booklet includes contact numbers if you should need any further advice after you have left the hospital.
You will also be informed of when you may return home (many patients are allowed home the same day), dependant upon any clinical reasons for you to stay in hospital or any practical reasons e.g significant distance to travel. You will be advised accordingly.
As you leave, Letters will be sent to your GP and your referring Consultant detailing the treatment that you have received. Usually your referring hospital will be asked to resume your follow up care and summaries of your clinical progress will be sent to us here in Sheffield. The Consultants in our Gamma Knife radiosurgical unit will continue to advise on the management of your case where required.
In Partnership with NHS England we will also ask you to complete Health Questionaires before and after your treatment. Your responses will help NHS England imrove the quality of care provided to you and other patients.
Once back at home you will be contacted by our Treatment Staff to check on your progress and to answer any further questions that may arise.
Research :
As a centre with nearly 40 years' experience treating many rare conditions, we regularly carry out clinical audit, service evaluation and research projects. The information we gather in these exercises helps to build on our understanding of radiosurgery allowing us to better inform both you and future patients worldwide, and may improve our service and treatment. The use of anonymised data about your treatment and follow-up may be used in these activities. Occasionally we might need to request additional information from NHS England, or other Governmental bodies, as part of this research. To do this we may need to temporarily use identifiable data, such as your NHS number, to enable this information to be linked to precise treatment data. However, if these steps are necessary we will apply to the Confidentiality Advisory Group (Confidentiality Advisory Group - Health Research Authority (hra.nhs.uk)) for legal support to use patient identifiable data without individual consent. This is called a Section 251 application and more information can be found here (4. Section 251 and the application of national data opt-outs - NHS Digital)
If you wish to opt out of us using your data in this way, please tell a member of the radiosurgical staff when you see us at clinic. They will record this on your records and it will in no way affect the treatment or follow-up that you receive from us.
Aftercare Information (Downloads):
(These leaflets are 'Treatment Specific'. Please ensure that you download the leaflet specific to YOUR condition)
- Arteriovenous malformation (AVM) – What happens now?
https://publicdocuments.sth.nhs.uk/pil1377.pdf
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Brain metastases - What happens now?
- Tumour/other conditions– What happens now?
https://publicdocuments.sth.nhs.uk/pil1376.pdf
