A revolutionary medical and scientific structure
The flagship project of AP-HM South Hospitals, the Movement and Locomotive system Institute (IML), coordinated by Professor Jean-Noël ARGENSON, offers a unique organization and modalities of care in France. Unrivaled, this hospital structure brings together specialized medical hospital-university services (orthopedic surgery, hand surgery, rheumatology, osteoarthritis surgery center, medical imaging and sports medicine), as well as Research laboratories certified by Aix-Marseille University and major research organizations such as INSERM and CNRS.
Care of Excellence
This caring system is highly specialized. This new structure aims at offering innovations in diagnosis and treatment in the field of osteoarthritis and inflammatory rheumatism, osteoporosis, and pathologies of sportsmen. The institute, developed as part of the South Hospitals reconfiguration initiated in September 2010, meets a real public health need, generated particularly by population ageing and chronic diseases development. The presence of patients, doctors and researchers in one place allows both clinical research and basic research. The IML medical and organizational coherence within the South site of Marseille University Hospital offers a complete set of care, from initial phase to rehabilitation.
Strong links with post-acute care and rehabilitation
The Institute of Movement and Musculoskeletal System (IML) is also linked to the Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Center and to the post-acute and rehabilitation care program developed within a public / private partnership. This project, unique in France, has 280 beds for post-acute care and rehabilitation on-site with the Valmante Centre of the General Union of Health Insurance Funds (UGECAM) and La Phocéanne and Saint-Martin clinics.
Ambulatory activity, a specificity of the IML
Parallel to current and highly specialized medical and surgical services, IML develops an important high level ambulatory activity (5,000 acts per year). This kind of care, representing an alternative to conventional hospitalization, has many advantages for the patient : he is able to go back home the day following an operation, treatment or examination whose indications are well accurate. Within a few hours, the patient can return to self-sufficiency and go back home accompanied.
This technique contributes to the comfort and quality of care by avoiding unnecessary hospitalizations. The surgery is made under general or loco-regional anesthesia, and the teams organize themselves under technical conditions imperatively requiring the safety of a conventional operating theater. Rheumatology or interventional radiology operations may be sessions of modern biotherapies adapted to rheumatic pathologies or gestures under local or regional anesthesia, with or without ultrasound, radiological or scanner control.
