The Vall d’Hebron Cardiology Department offers specialist care, with advanced procedures and the most innovative technology. It is a pioneer in developing and running clinical-practice protocols. It provides patient-centred service and offers medical care agreed on by the entire Cardiology team. Notable features include its own Clinical Epidemiology Unit and Experimental Cardiology Laboratory. 

The Cardiology Department boasts 37 highly qualified professionals, with specific skills and training.
The team is divided up into the following units: 

• Cardiovascular Critical Care Unit 
• Arrhythmia Unit 
• Cardiac Imaging / Echocardiography, Familial Heart Disease and Aortic Pathology Unit  
• Congenital Heart Disease in Adolescents and Adults
• Haemodynamics and Interventional Cardiology Unit
• Heart Failure Unit

These units are at the forefront of heart-disease treatment and offer multidisciplinary care for patients. The department aims to meet the future challenges of cardiology. A few examples of this are the Familial Heart Disease and Complex Congenital Heart Disease Units. And procedures such as transcatheter valve implanting and treatment for pregnant women with heart disease or endocarditis.

The nursing team is also a key feature for offering excellent care. They take part in every diagnostic and therapeutic procedure, in educating patients, in secondary prevention for the early detection of diseasesand in patient rehabilitation. Their work is especially important for elderly patients with multiple illnesses. Such patients have several programmes at their disposal, including clinical care and cardiac rehabilitation for ischaemic heart disease. The programmes are provided in coordination with the referred area’s primary care and gyms. 

 

Research

The research group in cardiovascular diseases carries out basic, clinical and epidemiological research. Its aim is to generate knowledge for improving prevention and patient diagnoses and treatment.
The group has 19 main researchers and 32 clinical projects and trials currently running. It published 142 papers in 2020.

The research group is part of the CIBERCV network, the Biomedical Research Networking Centre on Cardiovascular Diseases. It collaborates in the following areas: 

• Ischaemia-reperfusion injury: cardioprotection mechanisms, ischaemic conditioning and remodelling. 
• Coronary heart disease: genetic factors involved, determining factors in thrombotic complications and prognosis-factor studies. 
• Aortic diseases: determining factors in aortic dilation, anomalies in aortic biomechanics in Marfan syndrome and new methods for obtaining images. 
• Congenital or familial heart diseases: determining genetic factors and prognosis-factor studies. 

The research group takes part in the CIBERESP, the Biomedical Research Networking Consortium on Epidemiology and Public Health. It focuses on the following aspects:

• studying effectiveness
• cost-effectiveness of cardiovascular operations
• research in health results
• clinical research methods 

  

Education and Training 

The Vall d’Hebron training programme includes:

• undergraduate, master’s and doctoral students from the Autonomous University of Barcelona
• the medical specialisation in Cardiology programme (MIR)
• post-MIR subspecialisation programmes
• ongoing medical education 

The Cardiology MIR programme’s success enables the recruitment of high-level doctors to the hospital. 

The Cardiology Department also includes and jointly supervises an international doctoral school at the University of Barcelona as well as organising important scientific meetings. Vall d’Hebron enjoys international recognition for all the above reasons as well as considerable impact on many areas of knowledge. The department’s professionals collaborate in prestigious international bodies and societies, as well as on the editorial boards of scientific magazines in their field.

The Paediatric Cardiology Department deals with diseases that affect the heart from the foetal period. Foetal cardiology is developed in collaboration with the Obstetrics, Gynaecology and Neonatology Departments, which have all the human and technical resources necessary to guarantee quality care for treatment of heart disease, congenital or otherwise, detected during the foetal period.

In Catalonia, around 600 babies are born every year with congenital heart disease (between 5 and 12 per 1,000 live babies), of which about 25% will need surgical care during childhood.

Thanks to technological advances and improvement in surgical techniques, the survival rate of these patients has increased in recent years. This does mean that more and more children are growing up to develop cardiac insufficiency and suffer heart failure, meaning they will need a heart transplant. In addition, the rate of myocardiopathies, meaning genetic or acquired diseases that affect the strength of the heart muscle, is 1 per 100,000 inhabitants, and about 40% of children die within two years of diagnosis of the disease.

The Adolescent and Adult Congenital Heart Disease Unit (UCCAA) is the result of a collaboration agreement between Vall d'Hebron University Hospital and University Hospital of Santa Creu i Sant Pau, to bring together the efforts, resources and experience of the two hospitals with the greatest tradition in treatment of these diseases in a single level three congenital heart disease unit for adolescents and adults.

In order to group together outpatient care for congenital heart disease into a single area, the UCCAA Unit outpatient clinic is located in the Maternity and Children's Hospital, next to the Paediatric Cardiology clinic. This common area allows us to share workstations, databases and tools (3D ultrasound) and makes transfer and continuity of treatment simple, from paediatric age to adulthood, for what is a congenital and lifelong pathology.

Patients who require admission do so at the General Hospital, and stay on the Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery ward. Depending on their clinical circumstances, some of these adult patients with congenital heart disease must be admitted onto special wards:

Patients in critical condition: Coronary and Intensive Cardiological Care Unit of the Cardiology Department.

• Patients just out of operations: Cardiac Surgery Postoperative Unit of the Cardiology Department.
• Pregnant patients with congenital heart disease:
• Primarily obstetric pathology: Obstetrics Ward of the Maternity and Children's Hospital.
• Postpartum with serious cardiological risk: Coronary and Intensive Cardiological Care Unit of the Cardiology Department.
• Postpartum with mild cardiological risk: Intensive Obstetric Care Unit of the Maternity and Children's Hospital.

 

Portfolio of services 

• High-resolution outpatient clinic, including visits and electrocardiogram and/or echocardiogram in the same visit.
• Diagnostic imaging. The Department is equipped with the latest technology to achieve the highest quality diagnostics thanks to high-quality imaging.
• The technology the Department uses includes the Vivid™, a portable device that weighs just 4.5 kg and can be used at outpatient clinics, during heart surgery, in the haemodynamics and electrophysiology wards, and in paediatric and neonatal intensive care units, right by the patient’s bedside.
• The study and treatment of arrhythmias, linked to the Cardiology Department of the General Hospital.
• Diagnostic and interventional haemodynamics. The Haemodynamics Laboratory is equipped with digital radiological equipment that is biplanar with rotational angiography. This allows us to obtain diagnostic images of the highest quality, reduces procedure time and minimises the radiation received by the patient.
• We have advanced anaesthesia and resuscitation equipment; transthoracic, transoesophageal and intracardiac echocardiography; and we are able to carry out procedures that require ventricular assistance (Berlin Heart (R), Levitronix (R)) or that require ECMO support.
• Thanks to our technology and resources, we are able to carry out procedures that require the use of radiofrequency to ablate structures, and pressure guides to access locations that cannot be reached by usual catheters.
• The structure of the haemodynamic room allows hybrid procedures to be performed with interventional haemodynamists and surgeons and cardiologists acting simultaneously.
• Diagnostics and operations are carried out on patients from the immediate neonatal period (first day of life) as well as throughout the disease evolution of the disease.
• The Haemodynamic Laboratory supports procedures for foetal operations.
• Hospitalisation at the Neonatal and Paediatric ICU.  
• Conventional hospitalisation.
• Heart transplant. The Paediatric Cardiology team plays an active role throughout the process of the heart transplant before, during and after the operation.
• Telemedicine. For more than ten years, now, the Paediatric Cardiology Department has been connected to other hospital centres. Telecardiology allows us to make decisions in consultation with other teams, and prevents unnecessary movement of patients around the hospital.