The Silver Star Unit is a small team of dedicated staff who provide high level care to those mothers who have major troubles during their pregnancies often affecting the health and safety of both mother and baby.
These problems are not due to infertility, but to many other conditions including repeated miscarriage or other pregnancy losses from pre-eclampsia(sometimes known as 'toxemia of pregnancy'), placental bleeding or other placental problems. Women with kidney disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and other medical complications also receive help at the Silver Star Unit.
You may think that every hospital has such a Unit, but the Silver Star Unit is unique to the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford. Nowhere else will you find the same combination of skills and staff focused exclusively on the needs of a small but highly vulnerable group of pregnant women. For this reason, the Silver Star Unit is internationally recognised for its' work and organisation.
Oxford's nationally acclaimed Unit, which saves the lives and prevents the suffering of many mothers and babies, has two sides:
The Clinical Side
Where highly specialised staff provide comprehensive care and counselling, beginning sometimes before pregnancy where necessary, and carrying on throughout pregnancy, delivery and afterwards. The Unit offers the most up to date diagnostic and treatment facilities, in some regards involving techniques not available anywhere else in the world.
Click to read more about: Maternal Medicine
The Research Side.
There is an advanced and dedicated Team of researchers constantly working behind the scenes to unravel the causes of these complications of pregnancy. The Research Team have become international leaders in their field with an impact on vastly improving care given to pregnant women, not just in the United Kingdom, but in Europe, Canada and the U.S.A.
Doctors from all over the world come to train alongside Professors' Christopher Redman, and Ian Sargent at Oxford.
Women come from miles around to benefit from the expertise offered at the Silver Star Unit, some from the east and south coasts, Cornwall, Wales, Birmingham, London and even from overseas to ensure that they and their babies are given the very best care before birth to ensure the best possible outcome.
Click to read more about: Research
What is the Silver Star Society?
The Silver Star Society is a group of grateful parents who got together in 1987 to help support the Unit. Although, never a large group, the Society has been extraordinarily effective in raising money to buy much needed equipment, vital to the Unit's work, which could not otherwise have been afforded. This has improved the facilities phenomenally over the years, by supplying equipment that the NHS is not able to afford.
Improvements include:
Numerous Ultrasound Scanners to monitor well-being of unborn babies.
High Dependency Bed on which to nurse very sick mothers.
Hugely better facilites on Level 6.
In 1990-91 a staggering £180,000 was raised for the purchase of the First Silver Star Flow Cytometer, a highly specialised piece of equipment which is central to the Research Team's work.
Ten years later, a new Flow-cytometer was bought, funded by grants, to which the Silver Star Society provided a crucial £50,000.
Silver Star Society's Aims:
To make things better for Silver Star mothers and their families. To raise money to keep the Unit well equipped, to improve the comfort and amenities for women during their stay at the Silver Star Unit, and to support research into important problems of pregnancy'.
Thanks to everyone, the Society does a good job in realising all these aims!
The Silver Star Unit is unique in that staff, parents and scientists work together to help raise funds.
Silver Star Unit
Level 6
Women's Centre
John Radcliffe Hospital
Headington
Oxford
OX3 9DU
Please contact:
Maggie Findlay
Silver star Society Secretary
Tel. 01865 221718
E mail:silverstar.society@orh.nhs.uk
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