History
The founding of Masaryk Memorial Cancer Institute was based on an idea expressed by one of the establishers, Lucie Bakesova, in 1927, who said that "the city of Brno needs a hospital for those, who cannot be admitted to any other hospital because they have terminal stages of tuberculosis or cancer and they spend the last days of their lives in undignified conditions...". The son of Lucie Bakesova, the surgeon Jaroslav Bakes, has elaborated a detailed concept of an anti-cancer therapeutic and research institute. The concept eventually gathered the support of professional and general public. And thus, the centre was established and first patients were admitted in 1935. Since then, the Masaryk Memorial Cancer Institute (MMCI) became the largest comprehensive oncologic centre in the Czech Republic.
Profile
MMCI has an overall capacity of 225 hospitalisation beds, including 20 ICU beds. Each year, about 10 000 hospitalisations and 250 000 outpatient examinations are carried out in the MMCI. The MMCI provides preventive, diagnostic and therapeutic care to adult patients with all types of solid tumours. The centre serves mainly the population of South Moravian district (that has 1,2 million inhabitants) and Vysocina district (0,5 million inhabitants), but also to patients from other districts of Czech Republic. The MMCI has best quality modern technical equipment for diagnostics and all necessary modalities of anticancer treatment. Care is provided at all stages, starting from diagnosis, during anticancer treatment, as part of follow up (survivorship) and also in the phase of symptomatic palliative care. The MMCI carries out basic and clinical research as well as undergraduate and postgraduate education of doctors and nurses.
Specialities
The MMCI provides care mainly to adult patients with solid tumours. There
are specialised teams for individual types of tumours (head and neck, GIT, gynaecologic tumours, tumours of the lungs, sarcomas, breast cancer, urological cancer, tumours of the CNS, NET tumours and tumours on unspecified origin). Additional teams exist for different aspects of supportive and palliative care.
Palliative and Supportive Care
Supportive and palliative care is an integral part of the care, which is provided to all patients.
Special teams for supportive care are available to assist oncologists whenever needed: the Palliative Care team, Nutritional team, team for Care for Chronic Wounds. In addition, the following departments are available to all hospitalised and ambulatory patients: Social Care department, Psychologic Care department and the Hospital Chaplain services.
Last update: August 2021
