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Our expertise

Royal Brompton & Harefield NHS Foundation Trust is a partnership of two specialist hospitals which are known throughout the world for their expertise, standard of care and research success.  As a specialist trust we only provide treatment for people with heart and lung disease.  This means our doctors, nurses and other healthcare staff are experts in their chosen field, and many move to our hospitals from throughout the UK, Europe and beyond, so they can develop their particular skills even further.

We carry out some of the most complicated surgery, and offer some of the most sophisticated treatment that is available anywhere in the world and treat patients from all over the UK and around the globe.

Our research

We work on numerous research projects that bring benefits to patients in the form of new, more effective and efficient treatments for heart and lung disease.  We are also responsible for medical advances taken up across the NHS and beyond. Each year between 500 and 600 papers by researchers associated with the Trust are published in peer-reviewed scientific journals, such as The Lancet and New England Journal of Medicine.

Our main partner is the National Heart and Lung Institute at Imperial College, London.  We run additional research projects with other hospitals and universities in the UK and abroad. In 2006 the government gave all 10 of our research programmes the highest possible rating.

Some useful facts:

• We serve more than 90,000 outpatients and 26,000 inpatients each year.  On an annual basis our staff perform over: 3,000 angiograms/ cardiac catheterisations; 1,800 thoracic surgery operations; 2,400 coronary angioplasties; 2,000 treatments for respiratory failure; and 1,200 heart bypass operations.

• Our services for children were given the highest possible 'excellent' rating in the most recent Healthcare Commission survey, reflecting our facilities for children and training for staff who deal with children.

• We are Europe's top-ranked respiratory research centre and our cardiac, cardiovascular and critical care teams are rated in the top three most highly cited health research teams in Europe.

• Our Heart Attack Centre at Harefield has pioneered the use of primary angioplasty for the treatment of heart attacks and has the fastest arrival-to-treatment time in the UK (23 minutes compared to a national average of 56), a crucial factor in patients' survival.

• In data published in March 2008 by the Healthcare Commission, we were shown to have the lowest MRSA bacteraemia and the lowest Clostridium difficile rate (for C. difficile only rates for the over 65s were measured) in England, when measured per 1,000 bed days.

• Our on-site foetal cardiology service enables clinicians to begin caring for babies while still in the womb; many are scanned at just 12 weeks, when the heart measures just over a millimetre.

• Europe's largest unit for the treatment of cystic fibrosis is based at Royal Brompton Hospital: we see over 1,100 adults and 200 children with this condition.

• Both our hospitals have a 64-slice cardiac CT scanner allowing us to diagnose many patients without invasive procedures.

• We are the country's largest centre for the treatment of adult congenital heart disease, staffed by a specialist team including four full-time specialist consultants.

• We help over 8,000 adults who have breathing problems caused by diseases such as COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) and severe asthma.

• Our surgeons are pioneering techniques in minimally invasive surgery, where only a small incision is made and the operation carried out through the tiny incision with the help of catheters, cameras and robotic equipment.