Wessex Cardiac Centre Profile
The Wessex Cardiac Centre is a Centre of Excellence for cardiac care in the UK.
 | Whilst the day to day running costs of the centre are met by the Southampton University Hospital Trust, the needs of the unit often go beyond the finance available to it. So in order to be able to offer the most effective treatments and very best facilities to patients and their relatives, the centre relies on charitable donations and this is where the money raised by Wessex Heartbeat comes in. Internationally renowned, the centre is one of the largest and most successful in the UK with a geographical catchment area covering most of central southern England, Devon, Cornwall and the Channel Islands and serving a population of around 2.8 million people. Every year it treats over 20,000 patients for all forms of serious heart conditions. In addition to the high quality service it gives to adults, it is internationally renowned for the treatment of children and adolescents born with congenital heart disorders. Almost 1,000 children are admitted every year, 250 of whom undergo surgery. |
The centre is housed in the £60m state-of-the-art North Wing, at Southampton General Hospital. Opened in 2007, it includes cutting edge catheter labs, a specialist cardiac intensive care unit and a dedicated cardiac MRI scanner. | ||
The Wessex Cardiac Unit is now one of the Trust's key defining services - which means it is being developed into a global centre of excellence treating more and more patients from outside the Wessex area. In the last 10 years, the number of patients undergoing open-heart surgery has risen to over 1300 a year. However, the number of patients undergoing many types of non-surgical procedures is steadily increasing. Doctors in the Wessex Cardiac Centre are now leading the way with various innovative Cardiac procedures, as well as helping to pioneer the field of remote diagnosis via video link, thanks to the technology provided by the Heartbeat Education Centre.
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‘Without doubt Wessex Heartbeat has grown over the years from playing a supportive role to becoming a driving force in the future development of the Wessex Cardiac Centre' - Dr A P Salmon, FRCP, FRCPCH Consultant Paediatric Cardiologist | ||
