Tecsam – Tecnologia e Serviços Médicos SA, is a company that started its activity of providing medical care to kidney insufficient patients undergoing hemodialysis treatment by assuming responsibility for the technical direction of the Hemodialysis Center of Clínica Central do Bonfim in Porto. Subsequently, he was responsible for the assembly, opening and initial activity, for about three years of a Unit in Gondomar and belonging to that Clinic.

In October 1994, maintaining that responsibility, it acquired facilities on the right ground floor of the Panorama Building, located on Avenida Nossa Senhora do Amparo, in Mirandela, and started transformation works in what is now the company’s headquarters.

On January 16, 1995, he started his clinical activity in Trás-os-Montes, being responsible for making the dialysis treatment to about 30 patients transferred from the District Hospital of Bragança (which at the time was overcrowded) and to other renal insufficients displaced and treated in Porto, with some of them doing 1500 km per week.

The opening of this Unit, by authorization granted, “on an exceptional basis” by the then Minister of Health, Mr. Dr. Paulo Mendo, closed this shortage of supply for the treatment of hemodialysis in the Transmontana Region.

As Mirandela is a city with a great centrality in this Region, our Unit has received, throughout these years, several dozen renal insufficient patients, maintaining high quality standards, highly recognized by those we care for, including patients from other areas of the Country, emigrants undergoing hemodialysis (some of whom have returned permanently, given the way they were treated), and patients from other countries who visited us.

Some Colleagues in the Specialty have visited our Unit and have shown their appreciation for the way we work.

Given the scarcity of vacancies, we had to expand the facilities, taking up the entire ground floor of that building, acquiring the space left vacant by an Insurance Company based there and transferred to the city center. Transformation works were carried out and more dialysis stations were created, increasing the capacity for 72 more patients.

Subsequently, we built a Root Unit – Renal Rehabilitation Center Dr. Paulo Mendo – in Lordelo, Vila Real, on land purchased from Santa da Misericórdia in that city, and we transferred more than 30 patients from the Mirandela Unit in order to meet the needs of treatment of patients requested by the Health Sub-Regions of Vila Real and Bragança, creating vacancies for that purpose.

In order to get closer to the patients’ residence, a new Unit was completed in Mogadouro, and those from that City were transferred from our Mirandela Unit, as well as those from Freixo-de-Espada-à-Cinta and neighboring areas.

Some of the patients treated at the Hospital de Bragança, residing in Vimioso, Algoso, Miranda do Douro and the rest of the Planalto Mirandês, were also transferred, avoiding travel so long that it was painful for the sick and costly in paying for transport to the State. The overcrowding of that Hospital Unit and the limited availability of places at the Mirandela Unit were thus resolved.

In 2007, we started the construction of a new Unit in the City of Mirandela – the Renal Center -, currently concluded and with operating authorization issued by the Regional Health Administration of the North. The investment made to date has been around seven million euros.

It is a building with 90 meters in length, basement, ground floor and first floor occupying the entire length, and a tower with three more floors. The building is topped by terraces on the first floor and the tower.

The basement consists of rooms for the treatment of water and the manufacture of concentrates, warehouses, the operating room, and physiotherapy rooms for the rehabilitation of patients on dialysis and on an outpatient basis, or the Continuous Care Unit.

The operating room is dedicated to the construction of vascular accesses for patients on dialysis, preventing them from traveling to Porto and minimizing the risks of access thrombosis, which often occur due to hypotension during transport.

The ground floor comprises three hemodialysis rooms, three offices, gym, meeting room, pharmacy, technical office and chapel. All rooms have natural light and provide a very pleasant landscape view, they are extremely welcoming, and their function is to avoid the discomfort resulting from the delay in treatments (most of which last 4 hours).

The gym, equipped with 6 mats (with 2 more in the basement, in one of the physiotherapy rooms) and 3 bicycles, is intended for the motor rehabilitation of patients, given the almost generalized tendency of older patients towards sedentary lifestyle. Exercise, as several studies reveal, is of fundamental importance in improving appetite; in the fight against psychic depression; the inflammatory state to which they are predisposed due to blood contact for a long time with foreign surfaces, improves immensely due to muscular work, etc.

The chapel is a space for recollection and prayer that many patients requested and which, also due to the conviction of the technical direction, was built.

On the first floor there are 10 rooms with 2 beds and three with 1 bed, completing 23. It is intended for a Continuous Care Unit for patients undergoing dialysis. It was built due to the fact that several patients suffered damage (some mortal), due to the lack of specialized care in the Units that treated them.

We already have 8 medical action technicians, trained for a year and a half, awaiting its opening. Its opening implies the creation of about 20 new jobs, because, in addition to the technicians, nurses, physiotherapy technicians, cleaning assistants and administrative staff will be admitted.

Finally, we have in mind to build houses for dialysis tourism, intended for patients of this type, residing in our country or abroad. There are spaces made available by the Chambers of Mirandela and Mogadouro, and this Company also intends to contribute to the tourist development of the Region of Trás-Os-Montes and Alto Douro, which has unique panoramas in its extensive landscape range, offered by its countless mountains, mountains and valleys, many of them fluvial.